General 3min de Leitura - 21 de September de 2020

The secrets of a safe and efficient e-commerce

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Crisis? In Brazilian e-commerce, apparently not. The 2019 numbers are encouraging, according to a survey by Ebit / Nilsen. In the first half of this year, the increase was 12% in online sales compared to the same period in 2018 – the same percentage found in the previous comparison. This represents a turnover of R $ 26.4 billion in the first six months of 2019. The volume of orders increased by 20%, with 18% of purchases made by people who had never purchased anything online before. And more: of the new entrants, 64% bought via smartphone.

The study does not necessarily show a recovery in the economy, but a change in the pattern of consumer behavior, which has come to rely more and more on the internet to buy. That is, if your business still doesn’t sell online, better hurry up, because you’re already losing sales.

But one of the reasons for the growth is precisely the customer’s confidence in a safe and efficient operation. It is one of the secrets, since price, time and quality will be left behind in the face of any sign that there is not enough security. A bad experience or a suspicion – no matter how small – is enough to drive the online buyer away. How then to have a guaranteed e-commerce?

Multi-layer protection

There is no miracle formula that, with little effort, will protect your company’s e-commerce. What exists is the investment in several layers of security that together will bring the protection that your business needs. It starts with choosing the supplier that will host the e-commerce. Watch out for low-cost options; they will offer you a functional product, but with insufficient security requirements, increasing the risk of incidents. So it is an item that is not worth saving. Not necessarily the most expensive solution will be the best, but the cheapest is far from being. An interesting option for e-commerce is a virtual private server, which balances performance, security and reasonable cost.

Speaking of security, Google reported 5 years ago that it was including HTTPS as a ranking factor. In 2017, it started to mark sites without this technology as requiring e-commerce passwords or credit cards as unsafe. HTTPS connections guarantee data encryption, and many customers verify this at the time of purchase. Some sites have HTTPS only in the payment area, but it is recommended that this be extended to the entire structure. When switching to HTTPS, you must choose an SSL Certificate suitable for your case, which can be purchased from the hosting company.

Continuous platform checks

It is not enough to put e-commerce on the air and find it unnecessary to maintain or update it. It is also a mistake to consider that it will be the sole responsibility of the developer, designer or hosting company. Even if you are not an expert in the field, there are some things you can do yourself. If you use conventional e-commerce platforms, such as Magento or WooCommerce, change the default administrative area, for example. This avoids attacks by crackers (malicious users) looking for easy targets. The same logic must be used for logins and passwords.

It is also possible to create a white list with IP addresses. Those on the list will be controlled by the server administrator, so that access is only allowed to known IP addresses. Another tip is to configure the system to receive alerts of repeated login failures, always suspicious behavior. And more: make backups! It never hurts to remember that human or hardware failures can lead to data loss. Many services offer a means of backing up automatically – avoid performing this type of procedure manually, the chances that there is no discipline in this activity is very great.

All the care is not enough

The backup item is quite broad. It is also part of differentiated technologies, such as Content Delivery Networks (or CDN, acronym for Content Delivery Network). It is a set of geographically dispersed servers; whose function is to store copies of your e-commerce files. Among the benefits, is the fact that a CDN is able to recognize malicious traffic, preventing it from causing damage to your business. It can also prevent Distributed Denial of Service Attacks (DDoS) attacks, which could make e-commerce unavailable and consequently prevent you from selling.

An even more sensitive point is related to the storage of data, such as CPF, RG, emails and credit card numbers. With less than a year to go into effect, the General Data Protection Law establishes a series of new criteria for companies that keep this information from their customers. Click the link LGPD Guide and see the complete guide that OSTEC has prepared on the topic. As for your e-commerce, talk to our experts and find out how we can guarantee total protection of your results.

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