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Running an eCommerce website has a host of benefits. You can market to a global audience, This gives you a virtually endless number of potential customers. You’ll need to put work into convincing them to buy from you, however.
There’s a lot involved in that. While attractive sales and marketing copy will play a large role in that, your website’s security will also be involved. If potential customers believe that your website isn’t secure, then they’re not going to buy anything through it.
You’ll need to know how to make your eCommerce store more secure. That’s easier said than done. There are a few specific steps that you should take. Though website security is something you’ll need to work on continually, you should start with a few specific things.
How To Make Your eCommerce Store More Secure
Switch To HTTPS
Most eCommerce providers already know to implement HTTPS into their website. This is a certification that certain pages or websites are secure and are typically gotten with an SSL certificate. As obvious as this is a way to make your online store more secure, there are different ways of going about it.
Many retailers, for instance, typically have it enabled purely on the payment area of their website. That leaves most of the rest of the site relatively unprotected. You should aim to have HTTPS across your entire website.
Doing so will also help with your search rankings, as Google and other companies place an emphasis on these SSL certificates.
Use 3DS Authentication
3DS authentication has become increasingly prominent in recent months. That’s primarily because it’s an improvement on existing credit card payment technology. It mainly focuses on safeguarding purchases conducted online. That’s primarily done by adding another layer of security to the purchase.
It also allows for a more streamlined experience for your customers, especially if they come back regularly. If you don’t know much about it, you can learn more about 3DS authentication here.
Use Geo-Location Software
Geo-location software offers quite a few benefits. The most notable, and perhaps obvious, is how it relates to your eCommerce website’s security. It does this in a few ways. By analyzing the IP of an order, it can give you the level of risk associated with the transaction.
You can then use this information to determine whether or not to go through with the sale. The last thing you’ll want is to send out products to a fake address and receive chargeback costs, among other things.
The fraud score that you get will take multiple factors into account, such as proxies and other cloaking measures. That should be more than enough to give you an accurate analysis of each order.
Make Sure Your Platform Is Secure
There’s a wealth of eCommerce platforms for you to take advantage of. While many of these will be secure, they’ll offer it in varying degrees. You’ll need to spend time researching each of the platforms that you’re considering.
You should also consider what kind of security features you can add to your platform when you’re using it. One of the more notable parts that you should identify is how regularly the platform is updated. Should it not happen too often, it could be a potential target for hackers.
These typically update and improve security features, alongside multiple other factors. Though security isn’t the only factor you should consider in your choice of platform, it is one of the more notable.
Keep Your Admin Secure
One of the most overlooked areas of a website’s security is its admin area. If you’re using one of the more standard eCommerce platforms, then you’ll likely be used to the default admin area. You should change this, as it may not be the most protected way of having things set up.
While there’ll be a certain security standard already in place, they may already be under some form of threat. Personalizing the admin area with extra security will be more than recommended.
When doing so, you should change the default usernames, among other important areas.
Wrapping Up
Finding out how to make your eCommerce store more secure can be quite difficult. There’ll be multiple factors that you’ll need to focus on. Starting with the above will build a foundation for your website’s security.
These will offer your site a significant amount of protection. As a result, your website should convert more sales while also keeping your customers’ information safe. With that in mind, you can rest easy knowing that you’re somewhat prepared against hacks.
