ECommerce: How to Protect Your Online Store from the Internet Burglars, Part 1

How to Protect Your Online Store from the Internet Burglars, Part 1

Written by Lynne Schlumpf

The theft of credit card numbers is enormous. It is estimated that as many as 40% of all online transactions are bogus.

This article is normally an electronic booklet sold on my site, but I decided its content was too important to not share with you.

One of repparttar 109065 worst things that can ever happen to an online store on repparttar 109066 Internet is lurking at every storefront out there. The Internet burgulars, as I like to call them, are waiting for you to let your guard down just for one second while you're processing their credit card number. It is at that point that you may as well just walk out in repparttar 109067 middle of repparttar 109068 street and throw every bit of money in your wallet and pockets at repparttar 109069 next car that goes speeding by. Or better yet, whatever merchandise it is that you are selling online, just go throw about 40% of your inventory into repparttar 109070 streets to let others come and pick it up. This sounds like a ridiculous analogy, I know, but it illustrates how much they can hurt you. That estimate is not overstated.It is estimated that this could be repparttar 109071 percentage of lost sales to fraud on repparttar 109072 Net.

They think they're crafty, and they're costing people their hard-earned savings, repparttar 109073 business they worked so hard to create, and they don't care. All they care about is fast merchandise of repparttar 109074 right kind to offload and sell on repparttar 109075 streets, or whatever it is that these crooks do with it.

You will find some of repparttar 109076 stories I am going to tell you not only funny but ridiculous. I am not making light of a serious subject, believe me! This subject has obviously become a sort of a quest for me. I want to stop them, and I want you to help me. I don't want to see you give away even one cent to these people. Your business does not deserve repparttar 109077 thievery that abounds.

I am not saying that this type of practice did not exist before repparttar 109078 Internet became a household word. It was happening EVERYWHERE! I used to have a friend who was a manager for a COMPUSA store. This was a very large store with thousands of orders a day, but this guy knew what he was doing. He did not lose anything to these people. He taught me many of repparttar 109079 things I am going to pass on to you. I remember being in his office one day, and repparttar 109080 phone rang. Some women was screaming so loud at him, I could hear her across repparttar 109081 room. She was yelling that she was supposed to have her laptop delivered by next day mail, and it had not arrived yet. I thought, boy, they must've really messed up her order or something.

Developing a Winning Ecommerce Strategy

Written by Lee Traupel

One bright spot on repparttar

economic horizons around repparttar 109064

world seems to be continued consumer spending and ecommerce is clearly a part of this, with sales estimated to be in excess of $9.9 Billion in repparttar 109065

next three months according to ACNielsen. But, there is a dark cloud hovering over this sunny ecommerce landscape called poor web site design. Let's explore some of repparttar 109066

reasons why consumers are not reaching for their credit cards after perusing an ecommerce web site.

There is a huge knowledge gap about how repparttar 109067 web is really driving online and offline commerce. A recent eCommercePulse survey of more than 33,000 surfers conducted by Nielsen/Net ratings and Harris Interactive indicates ecommerce sites are driving more purchases offline (phone, catalogue, retail store sales) than online. Many consumers are using repparttar 109068 web to effortlessly compare features and pricing – then, calling repparttar 109069 company or visiting their local retail store to make a purchase. Clearly many companies need to factor this information in when analyzing their online and offline marketing expenditures and related ROI.

According to a recent Zona Research and Keynote Systems Report released earlier this summer over $25 Billion (USD) was lost in ecommerce due to users abandoning repparttar 109070 web site prior to a purchase being made or during repparttar 109071 process. The users just gave up because repparttar 109072 load times (the amount of time it takes a page to be displayed in a browser) were painfully slow. Today's online shoppers aren't a real patient group, they want information presented in 12-18 seconds, or they are off to another site that works

Unfortunately many firms have allocated a disproportionate amount of resources for advertising and not enough on good web site design and back end infrastructure. It's critical to make repparttar 109073 market aware of a site, but if repparttar 109074 potential customers are not presented with repparttar 109075 right navigation and menus (read information architecture) they will not buy. Case in point, according to recent Dataquest surveys (and others) between 20-40% of most users don't purchase because they can't figure out how to easily move around repparttar 109076 web site.

Many firms fail to properly integrate their ecommerce components with repparttar 109077 overall site design. The in-house developers or outside design firm concentrate on repparttar 109078 sexy parts of repparttar 109079 web site design process (the graphics, branding, look and feel) and only focus on repparttar 109080 ecommerce process after repparttar 109081 primary web site design is completed – making ecommerce an afterthought.

A large number of ecommerce web sites don't even list a phone number, arbitrarily forcing people to contact repparttar 109082 company electronically – this is a real problem, as many people don't want to use e-mail or forms as their primary means of communicating, they want repparttar 109083 immediacy of repparttar 109084 telephone.

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