Posted by: Incandescent June 24, 2010
Login in to Rate this Post:
0 
? 
?
llcoola,
Good to know that you are taking notes on improving your website. There are two critical points I want to stress on for e-commerce website.
a) Buyers confidence.
b) Security
a) Check this link out: http://www.verisign.com/ If you cant afford the certificate they provide then your web hosting company might provide you with shared SSL certificate which will cost you less than $100 / year. The most important thing is you want your customer to be confident that they can put their information on the website.
b) I agree paypal is rock solid. However, let me give you a scenario:
A user registers on your site, adds two items to his cart. Then goes to check out. So far so good. Now when they check out they will be directed to PayPal login to provide their credentials. When they are being directed the following information are also passed along to the paypal site.
a) Quantity
b) Price
Now what will you do if a hacker is sitting there and intercepting the information you pass to the paypal site? When the user hits "pay" or "submit" button your page, it sends a "POST" request to submit data to the paypal site. If you are not using any encryption someone can easily change the data you pass.
For example, lets say 13 year old kid in Turkey want's to have some fun with your website, he will simply change the quantity from 1 to 100. This can be done by intercepting the data while its on its way from your website to PayPal.
This will result in:
a) Angry Customers
b) Loss of confidence
c) Hassle of you if you already shipped the product or you have to issue a refund.
Overall a bad rep.
Stating my two cents here.
Finally, best of luck on your venture. Come back here after 3 months if you can and let us know how many customers registered to your site, How many registered customers made a purchase and total items sold to date. It will be interesting to know.
I am a stat whore as you can see, Hence, I like numbers.
Good luck!
Incandescent.
Good to know that you are taking notes on improving your website. There are two critical points I want to stress on for e-commerce website.
a) Buyers confidence.
b) Security
a) Check this link out: http://www.verisign.com/ If you cant afford the certificate they provide then your web hosting company might provide you with shared SSL certificate which will cost you less than $100 / year. The most important thing is you want your customer to be confident that they can put their information on the website.
b) I agree paypal is rock solid. However, let me give you a scenario:
A user registers on your site, adds two items to his cart. Then goes to check out. So far so good. Now when they check out they will be directed to PayPal login to provide their credentials. When they are being directed the following information are also passed along to the paypal site.
a) Quantity
b) Price
Now what will you do if a hacker is sitting there and intercepting the information you pass to the paypal site? When the user hits "pay" or "submit" button your page, it sends a "POST" request to submit data to the paypal site. If you are not using any encryption someone can easily change the data you pass.
For example, lets say 13 year old kid in Turkey want's to have some fun with your website, he will simply change the quantity from 1 to 100. This can be done by intercepting the data while its on its way from your website to PayPal.
This will result in:
a) Angry Customers
b) Loss of confidence
c) Hassle of you if you already shipped the product or you have to issue a refund.
Overall a bad rep.
Stating my two cents here.
Finally, best of luck on your venture. Come back here after 3 months if you can and let us know how many customers registered to your site, How many registered customers made a purchase and total items sold to date. It will be interesting to know.
I am a stat whore as you can see, Hence, I like numbers.
Good luck!
Incandescent.