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If you sell things online, particularly on your own website, it’s important to protect yourself from scams. As an e-commerce website you WILL be a target. Not to worry though, here are some great tips and things to look out for to better protect your business.
Make sure your website is using SSL. This goes without saying but I’m going ahead and saying it to emphasize how important it is.
An SSL certificate verifies the identity of a website and enables encrypted communication between a web server and a user's browser. It essentially creates a secure connection to protect sensitive data like login credentials and credit card information transmitted online. One can recognize a site using SSL by the "https" prefix in a website URL and a padlock icon in the browser address bar.
An SSL certificate will ensure that all information transmitted from the user to the server is encrypted. Even if people are not entering credit card data directly through your website, SSL needs to be in place. In 2025 ALL websites should use SSL with no exceptions. If your website is coming up as “not secure” contact us or your hosting company for help.
You should be using reCaptcha in your checkout process on your e-commerce website. Lately we have seen exploits where bots use invalid or stolen credit cards to place spam orders. This can be very disruptive for a website. Not only can your website go down because of the sudden uptick in traffic, you could be dropped by your credit card processor in extreme cases. Using reCaptcha will prevent bots from placing orders, and protect your relationship with your payment gateway.
If you use WooCommerce/WordPress for your online store you can use the reCaptcha Integration for WooCommerce Plugin [link: https://woocommerce.com/products/recaptcha-for-woocommerce/]
To make extra sure your customers are real people, you should force account creation on your e-commerce website and do away with guest checkout. Additionally have users verify their emails. On WordPress you can use the Customer Email Verification on WooCommerce Plugin.[link: https://woocommerce.com/document/customer-email-verification/]
Additionally, before you ship, you will want to check to make sure the mailing address is valid as well. There are also plugins for that including WooCommerce Address Validation [link: https://woocommerce.com/document/address-validation/]
Not all the scams will happen on your website. They can come in through your email and social media as well. I have an e-commerce store myself for a pottery business I have on the side, and I was contacted on social media by a women who wanted to order some pottery and pay through Venmo. It seemed like a fairly typical interaction until she said she attempted to pay for the order. I checked Venmo and didn’t see anything come through. She said it was blocked and I had to click on a link from an email I would receive from Venmo. At this point, she started to sound more like tech support and I became suspicious. The email from “Venmo” did come through, but when I checked the “from” email address, it was actually a gmail account so obviously a scam. The email looked legit if you didn’t inspect it closely. This type of scam works on the unsuspecting online seller every day. If I wasn't in this business, I might not have noticed. Always take extra steps to verify people, and look at return addresses, etc. if you get a strange feeling.
To prevent scams like this in the future, I’m creating a policy that people have to go through my website to place an order, unless they are local. It has the added benefit of being a lot easier for me to keep track of my inventory!
Milly has 18 years experience in designing and developing websites, developing apps, and online marketing. She is an expert at driving traffic to websites utilizing SEO strategies and custom digital marketing efforts. Her company, Zebralove Web Solutions offers full service digital marketing and website development. Comprehensive Search Engine Optimization services, and secure web hosting services.
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