If you’re thinking of starting your own eCommerce website, then you’re sure to be onto a great venture - however, you should be aware that it’s not all gain without pain. There are a lot of threats that eCommerce businesses face every day and you’re going to need to be prepared with how to deal with them. Being open to everyone on the internet sure has its marketing perks, but there are a lot of malicious users out there that would use your business as a way to exploit your customers.
Scalping
This past year, scalping has been very prevalent in the entertainment industry, and many customers all over the world have been frustrated by their inability to purchase new and trending products due to these scalping bots. What is scalping? It’s the denial of inventory from people buying up all of your stock with a plan to sell it for a much more expensive price to actual consumers. Why would consumers buy from them with the raised prices? Well, due to the amount of scalping going on, genuine stores haven’t had any stock left - meaning that there are only scalpers to turn to.
The only real way to combat this is by setting up various captchas to prevent bots from being able to make purchases from your website, making it much more difficult for scalpers to get their hands on your inventory. Sure, you’re selling everything you’ve got, but your customers will be very unhappy - it’s a profit that won’t last.
Credit card fraud
Every day people are losing their personal information to hackers over the internet, and a lot of the time there’s information that allows others to gain access to their finances. Credit card fraud happens all the time, and you need to make sure to protect your ecommerce site from fraud. You should make sure that any information that customers give you is incredibly secure, and that they can be sure their information isn’t going to be leaked to someone who shouldn’t have it.
Email phishing
Another way that customers lose can lose their information through your website is through phishing. While it’s not your fault, or even linked to you in any way - you should make sure your customers are aware of your practices. Phishing is when emails are sent out en masse claiming to be a business that they’ve recently purchased from, requesting their details in some form. Of course, a lot of people will see it and quickly disregard it, however, some may still fall for it. Making it clear to your customers that you would never ask for information over email can help to combat this issue.
DDos attacks
There are threats that target you as a business directly and can make it very difficult to make sales. A DDoS attack can prevent your website from functioning properly, by overloading your servers with fake interactions. When this happens, your website might become unresponsive and even go offline, so that customers won’t have access to it.