In the early days of the internet, people were afraid to use their credit cards for purchases, and rightfully so. There wasn’t much known in the way of encryption or identity theft. Today, however, people have gained trust with stores online and make credit card purchases on a daily basis. What security measures can you add to your website to help make customers feel safer about doing business with you?
Use Encryption at Both Ends
You might be wondering, “What is an SSL certificate and what can it do for my website?” An SSL certificate uses key pairs, much like cryptocurrency, to encrypt data being sent from a user’s computer to your website. By having an SSL certificate, you are telling your customers that you use the best encryption available to help hide their credit card and other information from bad actors.
This certificate can be seen in your browser just before the URL in the address bar at the top. By clicking on the padlock icon, you can see some of the details about the connection you have with the website you are visiting. Stores online will typically have stronger security than other websites, such as blogs.
Be Aware of Your NPS
Your company’s Net Promoter Score is a score that rates your business’ ability to have customers recommend you to other people. Essentially, it predicts how well or how poorly your business is performing from the perspective of customers and their willingness to promote your product after they’ve used it.
One might think there isn’t much to learn from an aggregate score, such as the net promoter score, but there is certainly a science to it that has been in place since the early 2000s. By figuring out your promoters, passives, and detractors, you can figure out a score and determine if you are doing as well as possible.
Use Third-Party Websites
Building a secure website from the ground up is nearly impossible these days. That’s why people use third-party website builders and remote website hosting. This allows the website to be housed on a server that is behind a Fort Knox of security already and provides a fast connection to your customers.
Similarly, stores such as Amazon and eBay already have very secure and trusted markets. Instead of trying to sell on your own website, utilize these markets and sell your products through their stores. The cost associated with using their stores should be much less than trying to run your own web store that customers aren’t familiar with and probably won’t automatically trust.
Another more popular alternative is to use Shopify or a site similar in function. This allows you more control over your own store. Shopify makes it seem like you are selling goods from your own website directly, however, the payment processing and other data transfers are all very secure and done through the service provider’s network instead of your own website’s security. This allows the best of both worlds in terms of customization and brand awareness for customers, while also having enterprise-level security for all credit card transactions and even allowing customers to store their cards for future use.
Use a Managed Service Provider
Your company is selling goods and doing well. You are hiring more employees and expanding your business in many directions. Every day, however, more and more devices are entering the network due to employees’ computers, tablets, and mobile devices.
Hiring a managed service provider is hiring an outside consultant to perform the IT services you need and monitor your system remotely 24/7. Your in-house technicians will work together with the IT service provider. Getting outside assistance means you have data stored in parity in another location, and you have remote monitoring in the event anything goes wrong at your business.
Making your website more secure is going to attract more people. In fact, websites without SSL certificates are often websites that people don’t even want to visit. Browsers alert users when they enter a website not using encryption. Make sure your company is using the best security available, so you are not turning away customers.
