Merchant Guide: Seamless & Secure Online Shopping Experience in 2019

April 29, 2019

Electronic Commerce popularly known as eCommerce refers to the buying and selling of goods or services via the internet. It also involves the transfer of money to carry out these transactions. The aim of any eCommerce site is to sell products. Many managers of eCommerce site mistake cataloguing as the real tool for selling their brands online; this couldn't be further from the truth. In actual fact, several determinants control your sales online and how easy it is to shop on your site is one of the most important of them. Selling your brand online is very competitive, there are several other brands offering the same products. To ensure you land customers and that your customers keep coming back, you must have effective strategies in place.

Below are two strategies that will help you achieve it:

1. Mobile compatibility of your site

Nowadays, with the invention of smartphones, most people surf the net with their phones. Making sure your site is mobile friendly is your first step to landing and keeping customers.

Responsive Web Design (RWD) is the best approach to having a mobile-friendly site. It makes use of fluid, proportion-based grids, flexible images and varying CSS style rules. This simply allows the site to shrink or increase in size depending on the device used.

2. The eCommerce checkout process

This is a very important aspect for most online shoppers. When shoppers have issues checking out or if they second guess the security of the payment process, they, most of the time, would completely abandon their shopping cart. To prevent this, the checkout process must be easy, fast and secure.

To ensure fast and secure checkout on merchant sites you need to:

Install a security certificate

A security certificate or Secure Sockets Layer is a cryptography technology that functions by establishing an encrypted connection between a client and your site using a symmetric key. It protects sensitive information like card details etc. being transferred over the web. There are several security certificates available today some of them are the Comodo, DigiCert, GoDaddy, GeoTrust, RapidSSL, Entrust Data card etc

Ensure your site complies with PCI Standards.

To run a successful and secured eCommerce website your site must meet the requirements of The Payments Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS).

The PCI is a set of widely accepted security protocols, set up to ensure the security of credit card transactions over the internet as well as prevent the misuse of cardholders personal information.

Any business that deals with credit, debit or cash cards or require payment over the internet must comply with the PCI DSS standards. The standards were created by the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Council, and its main aim was to regulate online card payments. Failure to meet these standards will result in the withdrawal of credit card processing privileges or in fines.

The PCI standards, though 12 in numbers, had 6 main focus area with regard to online card payments. They are:

First, online transactions must be carried out in a secured network area. This can be achieved through the use of firewalls etc.
Secondly, a PCI compliant website must protect all cardholder information and this can be done using digital encryption.
Thirdly, the website must be protected from hackers by making use of up to date anti-spyware and anti-malware programs.
Next, those with access to confidential information should be few. The information they have access to should be restricted and controlled.
The network of a PCI compliance site must be monitored and constantly tested to ensure that all its security protocols are up to date and are fit to forestall any malicious attack.
Lastly, the security policy must be defined and maintained at all times. Any instance of noncompliance should be met with disciplinary measures.

3D Secure 2

3-Domain Secure or 3D Secure is a security protocol designed to reduce CNP fraud. It was first launched by Visa in 2001 and then later incorporated by other major credit cards brands. Presently, it is administered under EMVCo, a partnership equally owned by American Express, Discover, JCB, Mastercard, UnionPay, and Visa. It is the only accepted fraud prevention protocol available to major credit card brands.

The protocol has carried out its functions of preventing credit cards frauds admirably over the years. With the rapid increase in technology and the increase in using mobile phones to surf the net, the 3D Secure 1 faced a major challenge - its incompatibility with mobile device screen, making payments on mobile phones difficult to carry out.

To improve upon the outdated 3D Secure protocol, EMVCo released an upgrade in 2017 named 3D Secure 2 (3DS2). This latest edition of the 3D Secure protocol addresses many shortcomings of the previous version. The protocol provides fluid authentication interface on mobile devices, scales better on smaller screens and even has a mobile Software Development Kit (SDK) component added to it. With the new mobile SDK, customers can now make secure payments directly on an eCommerce app without having to get redirected to a browser.