When shopping online, customers need to feel safe and secure. As a key aspect of eCommerce involves handing over sensitive details such as name, address and credit card information online, businesses and their checkouts need to convince customers their data will remain secure throughout the initial transaction and long into the future.
This is done through maintaining customer privacy, the integrity of any information sent to eCommerce servers and authenticating the transaction to make it official. Here are a few tips to help deliver additional layers of security to your commerce checkout.
1. Building trust
An eCommerce checkout needs to convince customers that any information they input into the checkout is kept safe and secure. One way to build trust in payment systems is to acquire and display an SSL certificate.
An SSL certificate encrypts any information you send from computer to computer as it attempts to reach its destination server. As a result, the information becomes unreadable to everyone except for the destination server, protecting it from hackers.
As well as encryption, an SSL certificate authenticates the server, gaining customers’ trust. This ensures the information is being sent to the right server and not a rogue server set up by criminals to trick customers into giving up their sensitive data.
It is absolutely essential for any eCommerce firm to acquire an SSL certificate as the certificate is crucial in the quest to protect sensitive information.
2. Visual cues
As well as acquiring an SSL certificate, customers need to be actively reassured their information will be kept safe. Consequently, implementing a set of visual cues helps to reinforce security (security icons, badges, bold text) on your checkout page.
A study from Smashing Magazine found customers using an eCommerce checkout that included security badges and icons perceived the page as being “more secure” than pages that did not include visual cues, which “inspired less confidence”.
On the technical side, there was no difference; it was all about small graphics that inspired trust and confidence in an eCommerce checkout.
For instance, Play.com uses a number of icons and badges (Verified by Visa, VeriSign, MasterCard SecureCode) to reassure their customers that information is kept safe.
3. PCI DSS compliant
Another way to reassure customers is to meet the security requirements (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) developed by the PCI Security Standards Council.
Any business that accepts card payments need to meet the standard, which ensures businesses that store, transmit and process card data are not putting their customers’ sensitive data at risk of theft.
However, businesses are open to shifting the responsibility for PCI DSS to a third party, meaning your payment pages will be hosted by a compliant payment service provider. By avoiding handling card data, the onus is on the third party and doing so won’t affect your customers’ checkout experience.
Security is one of main stumbling blocks to eCommerce but the sector continues to experience growth in both developed and emerging markets. This is, in part, due to more online businesses installing security on their payment pages to harbour trust and confidence in their customers.
Post contributed by Elliot Robinson, he has been a writer for a decade and has been contributing regularly for various finance blogs. He regularly keeps himself updated with recent trends in the financial market and shares various tips and tricks to run business successfully. He recommends you to visit: Firstatlanticcommerce
2 comments
Great tips that really help to increase buyers trust and ultimately conversions.
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