Building Trust on Your eCommerce Website
Many people often wonder about how to start an eCommerce website in a way that ensures they maximize security to keep clients coming back. It is actually not as difficult as it may seem to design and secure an eCommerce site in a manner that instills trust in customers and turns them into loyal shoppers.
Designing an eCommerce Site
Good site design is the key to creating a user experience that makes people want to buy whatever it is that a site is selling. eCommerce sites should be uniform on the pages where people list product descriptions and reviews. Aside from that, people are basically free to design their site in any way that they would like.
However, website owners who are not particularly well versed in design may want to hire a designer to make sure that their site looks great and is easy to navigate. In addition, it may be wise to perform user experience testing on sites before they go live. In this process, people go through the site and comment on what they like and do not like about the way that it is set up. Individuals can use this feedback to make improvements to the website that can help them increase their revenue.
Split testing different designs can also help people get a feel for the layout and design that is most likely to convert viewers into buyers. This involves showing different versions of the site to different people and tracking conversion rates to see what performs best. With this, individuals can ensure that their site makes the most it can per visitor, and this is particularly helpful if people are paying for advertising.
Securing an eCommerce Site
Security for eCommerce sites is critical in winning over customer loyalty. Luckily, there are a few easy things that website owners can do to make sure that everything is safe and secure for people who buy things from them online. The first step that people should do is to buy an SSL certificate that is assigned to their domain name.
SSL certificates come in a variety of versions, and their price can vary widely depending on how much of the site people want to secure. The cheapest SSL certificates only cover a single subdomain, and this can be good if your site uses a shopping cart to process payments while the rest of your site is unsecured. Individuals who want to make sure that their entire site is secure can use a wildcard SSL certificate that will cover both the original domain and any subdomains that may be used for things like payment processing. Site owners should also keep in mind that they will need a dedicated IP address in order for an SSL certificate to work correctly.
Another great thing about securing a site using SSL is the trust badges that many certificates come with. People can post these anywhere on their page to inform users that all of the purchases that they make on the site will be secure. These badges can go a long way in creating trust that will keep buyers coming back. In fact, most informed people would not risk entering their payment information on any page that is not encrypted using SSL as it could potentially be intercepted by hackers.
In addition, it is a good idea for eCommerce website owners to perform a regular penetration test or hire someone who can. This process involves going through various ways that hackers could potentially attack the site and testing to see if it is vulnerable in any scenario. Penetration testing will give site owners peace of mind knowing that their website will be fine if nefarious individuals decide to target it for an attack.
