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New Study Reveals Concerns About Online Shopping & Identity Theft

By Kasey Steinbrinck in Featured

Technology has made great strides towards making online shopping as safe as possible. But your security can’t be guaranteed. There are many criminals in cyberspace looking for an opportunity to steal your identity.

If you get a queasy feeling in your stomach whenever you type your credit card number on a website – you are certainly not alone. According to research by the Identity Theft Resource Center, the majority of the public is uneasy about online banking and shopping.

The ITRC study conducted in the summer of 2010 monitored trends in what it describes as “consumer concerns about internet transactions.” 500 people who used the internet for banking or shopping within a 30-day time-frame were asked specific questions about their worries.

The findings showed that an alarming 87% of those surveyed have significant concerns about personal information such as credit card information, passwords, user-names and social security numbers being stolen or lost by a business or financial institution in a data breach.

That number isn’t so shocking when you examine another study. This one was conducted by Verizon Business. It recently conducted an investigation into compliance with credit card security standards. In order to protect consumer credit card data, guidelines referred to as the Payment Industry Data Security Standards (PCI-DSS) were developed several years ago. However, Verizon discovered only 22% of companies were compliant with PCI-DSS when they were reviewed for the first time.

It’s no wonder that 81% of those questioned in the ITRC survey are worried about getting phishing emails. 77% are concerned that they’ll see a large increase in spam in their email inbox, and 80% are scared their password could be stolen!

The good news from this study is that many consumers are taking a proactive approach to protecting their identity while shopping online.

Of the consumers questioned in this study, 41% refuse to use a payment method with access to their bank account. Those who switch their online passwords on a regular basis make up 35% of survey participants. Nearly a quarter of participants say they only use low-limit credit cards when shopping online. That means if their personal information is lost in a data breach – the financial losses won’t be too terrible.

Online business should take notice of these numbers and realize that protecting their customers is extremely important. 73% of the people in this survey said they would no longer shop at a website that experienced a data breach. The majority also said they would advise friends and family to avoid that particular website as well.

When you go to an e-commerce website, check to see if they are displaying seals indicating a partnership with trusted web security companies such as Verisign and McAfee.

See if you can find the McAfee Secure Trustmark somewhere on the homepage. It will display the date when the website was last tested. McAfee scans for possible access to personal data, links to dangerous sites, phishing and other online dangers.

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Kasey Steinbrinck creates web content for online Check Printer Check Advantage. Read more of his writing on the Check Advantage blog at blog.checkadvantage.com.

The power of image

By Bobby Buys in Featured

Once upon a time kings and princes and other nobles in Europe relied on paintings to show them what their intended looked like before signing a marriage contract, spouse unseen.

Today, online shoppers rely on digital images to show them what an item looks like before committing to a purchase, merchandise unseen.

Over the years, the system has been perfected and it now works well most of the times. Consumer-to-consumer online trading platforms depend on it. However, buyers are not always happy with the images sellers post.

“Some sellers show only one view, with the result that you can’t really know what you are getting so you don’t buy”, says one buyer. “All pictures of products must be large and clear; I sometimes hesitate to buy if I can not see the product clearly”, says another.

When one has in mind that images are the single most important selling pitch that can be made online, it is surprising to find sellers who still post on small or fuzzy (or small and fuzzy) digital representations of their items. If the image is inferior to the item, the seller is in trouble, for the item will not sell (or will not sell well).

The seller is also in trouble if the picture is better than the item.

Let’s turn to history for some valuable lessons. Quite a few members of European nobility fell for the image of their intended only to be sorely disappointed later on. More often than not, the woman whose face they were to look at across the breakfast table for the rest of their lives was not nearly as pretty as her portrait suggested.

The non-happy-end story of Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves is the case in point. Having disposed of several wives (some of them by beheading), the unfortunate king found himself flung again into the match-making market. His eye settled on Anne of Cleves, largely thanks to Hans Holbein’s lovely portrait. Unlike some inferior painters who shamelessly flattered their models, retouching nature where necessary, Holbein actually painted Anne as she was. However, he chose to paint her from the unusual full frontal angle (portraiture usually favours the three-quarters view) in order to give less prominence to her – well – quite prominent nose.

The portrait pleased Henry VIII well enough. However, confronted with the real thing, he was so taken aback that he had the marriage annulled several months later. Being a sensible woman, Anne accepted the annulment and kept her head on her shoulders.

And if you as a seller want to keep your customers, do try to be painstakingly truthful when taking the snapshot. The photo has to be good and clear, but not retouched. All warts and blemishes must show. This is especially important for second-hand items. In those cases, the use of generic or stock photos is unacceptable.

Another point that the buyers raised regarding the images is the size of the item depicted. While Holbein managed to make Anne’s nose appear smaller without discrediting the truth, it has been noticed that some sellers will occasionally make their products appear bigger than they are. Jewellery and gemstones are the main “culprits” here. This is what one buyer suggests to online sellers: “When showing photos of, for example, rings, do upload images that depict them in relation to known items. Otherwise it can be a bit of a disappointment when the ring arrives and the band is as thin as a needle”.

Since every story worth its salt has more than one angle, it is only fair to mention that the contemporaries of Anne of Cleves regarded her as a sweet and reasonably attractive young lady. All except Henry, that is. In the same vein, it is possible for a buyer to be disappointed with a purchase not due to any shortcomings in the item or its representation, but because his or her expectations were too high – or simply different. There’s something for you to think about before getting angry at a seller if an item fails to live up to your expectations.

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Bobby Buys – bidorbuy.co.za is South Africa’s largest online marketplace. Buyers and sellers come to bidorbuy to buy and sell virtually anything in auction format or at fixed prices. Contact details: bidorbuy Marketing Department; email promotion@bidorbuy.co.za, web site www.bidorbuy.co.za

Stop Shopping Cart Abandonment By NOT “Shipping” Your Customers To Your Competitors!

By Adam Hommey in Featured

According to a recent Stompernet study, the industry average for shopping cart abandonment is 59.6%. Shopping cart abandonment” means that someone goes to a website, reads the sales letter, and clicks on the buy link to go to the secure order form, but they don’t finish filling out the form. So, this means that for every 10 people who click on a “buy” or “order” link to go to a shopping cart, only four (4) actually complete the transaction.

Online Retail is booming even in the current economic climate

By Dr. Philip Rhodes in Featured

Online retail is booming, even in the current economic climate, and has been growing significantly year after year for the past 6 years. However the online shopping landscape is changing, with declining customer loyalty; larger retailers focusing on price alone, severe price competition, the increase in cost comparison web sites and multibrand synergies.

Similarly consumers shopping behaviors are constantly evolving, with consumers now normally researching prior to purchases on multiple sites, often referring to comparison sites, and using search features within sites when looking for specific products. Sites must no longer just offer the best value for money (including price, service, mix of products, etc.), but they have to offer an exceptional user experience, which engages the consumer.

So what are today’s online consumers looking for?

Price is the most important factors for the majority of consumers. To ‘catch’ these consumers, key web pages have to stress savings, but just ‘shouting’ about the price is not enough, consumers must be able to find what they are looking for, once on a site, with ease. And they must feel that the site is providing the right type of product information.

Research conducted by fhios has continually shown that consumers look for the following ‘reassurances’ when deciding to buy from an online retailer. These are listed from most important:

• That they are saving money or have value for money
• Free shipping, rebates/coupons, sales, etc.
• Privacy policies and guarantees, particularly early in the check-out process
• Order tracking
• Customer ratings and reviews
• Customer service, including live help, in-store returns, etc.
• Email alerts on promotions and offers

Interestingly, this prioritized list of ‘reassurances’ does change when considering ‘loyal’ consumers; once a relationship has been built between the consumer and the retailer some of the ‘reassurances’ are taken for guaranteed and other factors become more important. We have observed that customer ratings and customer satisfaction, as well as alerts are far more important for ‘loyal’ customers.

So in a changing online retail environment, there is the contradiction between ‘price hunters’ and ‘loyal followers’. To turn the ‘price hunters’ into ‘loyal followers’ is about ticking the primary needs of the consumer, and then ensuring the online experience goes beyond their expectations by building in loyalty programs to keep them interested.

To create an effective loyalty program, retailers need some kind of discount to lure customers into the program, but then they also need to create other means of locking the customers in (ensuring long-term loyalty) once they are part of the program. Retailers create these switching costs by moving beyond discounts to delivering an array of targeted benefits and services to their loyalty program members. Here are some guidelines we recommend to retailers:

• Provide benefits that appeal to each targeted group’s unique needs and desires.
• Focus on rewarding desired changes in behaviour, not just giving member’s benefits for taking actions they would have taken anyway.
• Encourage members to unify their purchases by offering increasingly valuable rewards the more they spend.
• Offer rewards that are cost-effective and provide both immediate and inspirational incentives.
• Influence customers at multiple points in their purchase decision-making cycle (for example, at home, when they enter the store, while shopping online, etc.)

Different consumer segments will respond differently to different types of rewards, it is just a matter of identifying the needs of the individual customer groups and focusing the loyalty program for that group.

Loyalty programs have much to offer retailers in terms of increased customer insight, improved reputation, brand equity, etc, as well as decreasing price competition, increasing customer retention, decreasing marketing costs and allows a more comprehensive understanding of the customer.

Dr. Philip Rhodes, Ph.D., FRSA, fhios Director of Research. Philip holds a Ph.D. in Information Design from the University of Portsmouth. He has extensive research and teaching experience in hypermedia design and information architecture. He speaks fluent Portuguese, having lived and worked in Brazil. Before joining fhios, he worked with US solution providers Rare Medium and Sapient, as Director of Information Architecture. Specialising in offering user centric online solutions within the banking, education and telecommunications sectors. He also taught at several universities in Brazil and the UK, and has been widely published. Philip is the Director of Customer Experience Research & Design at fhios, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. (http://www.fhios.com/team.htm)

© Copyright 2012 All rights reserved. Jayde Online, Inc.

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