Notification For Ecommerce Site Owners
Dec 12, 2008 : Important Alerts : by Deanna
Please read this post in it’s entirety as it is not a sales pitch, but a notice on your website’s security.
With the holidays in full swing, online shopping sites are busy with the demands of increased traffic and sales. Woo hoo! But with the excitement of more visitors and transactions comes the need for strong security to protect your customer’s credit card details and personal information.
Your website may already include several security features such as:
1. An SSL Certificate: When customers reach the checkout stage of your shopping cart, you should notice a padlock located in the corner of your browser and a change in your website’s address to https. This means that the credit card numbers and text typed will be sent to your cart in an encrypted form (jumbled so hackers can’t read them).
2. A credit card processor: If you accept instant credit card purchases online, your credit card processor takes responsibility of storing the valuable information in a top secret system.
3. A shopping cart: Once a sale is completed, a customer’s information is stored in your shopping cart, often until you delete the record of sales. This is the final stop of the transaction trail, so the security of your shopping cart is VERY important.
Why am I writing this post?
Shopping carts are similar to virus software. When installed, they are current with security features and up-to-date with the latest in web technologies. As time passes, new viruses and security risks develop, which often create security holes in your shopping cart.
To combat these issues, shopping cart developers update their software frequently, offering new versions once a year or even every month. In addition to strengthening security risks, new versions usually offer new features and improvements so updating your cart provides several benefits.
As owner of an ecommerce website, it is your decision and responsibility in deciding whether to be notified of software updates pertaining to your shopping cart and whether or not to take action. If you would like to be notified by email of when a new version is released, please let us know, and we would be glad to add you to our free email list.
What is involved in updating my shopping cart software?
If you would like to update your website’s shopping cart software, you simply need to notify Deelicious Web Design when you would like to do so. Our studio will charge the upgrade at our hourly rate. How long will an upgrade take? This is dependent on your shopping cart brand and the period of time that has passed between updates. Sites which are upgraded frequently may only take a few minutes to update each time, whereas carts that haven’t been upgraded in years may involve several hours of work.
Depending on your shopping cart brand, there may be any additional fee for upgrades. Most of our carts offer their upgrades for free, but a few charge a low rate for upgrades after 6-months. Inquire to learn the cost of your specific cart upgrades.
Again, this email was sent to inform you of the possible risk you may be facing by not upgrading your shopping cart. You do not need to upgrade your shopping cart to continue offering your products online and you may never experience a security threat, but it is our responsibility to inform you of the possible consequences that may occur from not upgrading your software.
To learn more, please email us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), we would be glad to answer any of your questions.
Thank you and enjoy your holidays!
