You may be asking why you, the owner of a small online business, should be worried about online security. As it turns out, there are plenty of reasons you should invest on online security. How so?

Symantec’s 2014 Internet Security Threat Report showed staggering statistic how small businesses are likely to be victimized by online fraud. The report said that 61% of the attacks targeted businesses with employees fewer than 2,500. On the other hand, 41% of the attacks were aimed at those with fewer than 500 employees, and 30% targeted those with fewer than 250 employees.

The effects of a fraud attack

Take a look at the 2013 Target credit card debacle. Target had to pay $10 million to customers for the damages – and that’s notwithstanding the losses Target sustained. While Target is a big business that can at least take the hit, consider how disastrous it would be if the target was a small business.

The National Cyber Security Alliance once said that one in five small businesses are victimized by cybercrime annually. Among those who were victimized, over half would go out of the business within six months.

To make it even more realistic, imagine if you are the owner of a specialty shop that had an online component. One day, you noticed that someone placed an order for $5,000 worth of items. It’s not a big deal, as this is something you could sell on the storefront to a very eager customer. Your staff didn’t notice anything odd with the order, and they packed it up and sent it to the courier.

That night, you couldn’t sleep. You check the order, and noticed that the $5,000 was comprised of odds and bits. The order didn’t make sense. The next morning, you had your staff do the routine follow-up call (asking the customers how they liked the items) – but no one can get ahold of the customer. You dug deeper and realized that the address is a vacant property. Frantically, you realized what happened – you’ve been duped. A fraudster used somebody else’s credit card details to make a purchase on your store. The original credit card owner probably didn’t notice that their card is gone or hasn’t reported it yet. Whatever the case, the order is out the door, and you’re going to sustain $5,000 worth of losses.

The fact of the matter is that the biggest victims of credit card frauds are small businesses. They are the ones who would reel from the effects of such an attack. While $5000 may not be enough to sink a business, it can make a dent that you would be hard-pressed to fix if you do not have the money to start over.

How to avoid credit card fraud

Thankfully, there are a number of ways through which you can protect your online business from credit card fraud. Firstly, look out for the red flags. These red flags usually involve:

• Unusually large orders from a customer who has not even inquired about anything
• Expensive orders that are under rush processing or overnight shipping
• Missing information on the order, such as a phone number
• Orders from foreign countries that are being shipped within the USA
• Orders from the US that are being shipped to foreign countries
• Drastic change in the usual amount being purchased (for example, if your customer regularly purchases items worth $50 and the next transaction was $500)
• Suspicious email addresses – this means email address that are in long, alphanumeric format. Most email addresses are very easy to understand (for example, firstname.lastname@wherever.com), as this email address is something that they would use on their day-to-day life. If you come across an email address such as 12345678ashedjhajh@wherever.com, then it’s probably a scammer and you should pay closer attention.

While these things are not usually a sign of fraudulent online activity on its own, it is worth checking out if several of the signs are present in any transaction.

Now that you are familiar with the red flags, here are a number of ways through which you can further protect your business from credit card fraud:

• Verify – Compare the billing and the shipping address. If they do not match, call the credit card holder and see verify the shipping address. This way you would be able to determine if the credit card holder actually placed the order. If you are unsure of an order, call the customer using the number they gave you and make an excuse to talk to the cardholder. If you cannot talk to the cardholder, do not ship the items. Likewise, you should also verify that the IP address matches the billing address. Lastly, use address verification and card code verification (CCV) to ensure that you are dealing with a person who is authorized to use the credit card.
• Set a declined transaction limit – Individuals with access to several credit card numbers would usually use a software script to send instructions to your site until one is accepted. By setting a declined limit (for example, three declines), you would be forcing the user to actually contact your customer service department. If they are fraudsters, they would be unlikely to contact your customer service department.
• Flag high value orders for manual confirmation – Instead of having everything automated (i.e., from placing items to cart and verifying the payment), have a limit where high value orders have to be verified by a live person. This could be as simple as having someone on the phone call the customer. Again, if they are scammers, they would be unlikely to speak with a real person.
• Coordinate a package recall service with your shipping company – This service enables you to track packages in real time and to freeze the delivery at any given time. This way, when you discover something fishy going on with a transaction, you can immediately ask the item to be held at a distribution center or to delay delivery while you are verifying the transaction.
• Use software that can detect potential fraud – There are numerous software that can see up to the minute information and determine if they are fraudulent or not. This would minimize the risk of scammers targeting your website.

These are just some of the things that you can do to ensure that you are protected against credit card fraud. Remember, when in doubt, verify.

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It comes as no surprise that more and more people are putting up an e-commerce store. More folks these days would rather skip traffic altogether and are buying everything online. Putting up an e-commerce store is a great way to start a new venture and can be very profitable for you as well. Here are a few things you can do to get your business steered in the right direction.

Technology is both convenient and simple, so it comes as no surprise that more and more people rely on it. Online, everything from cars to books can be bought. This wave is something a lot of entrepreneurs are jumping on. When you do e-commerce in the correct way, you get a truly competitive advantage. This gives other online e-commerce players the opportunity to go against old-fashioned titans in brick and mortar stores.

Also, e-stores are becoming the method most people use to buy items. In fact, many shoppers have favorite online sellers that they regularly buy from.

The thing is, success is not guaranteed just by having a site dedicated to e-commerce. There are a few things you need to keep in mind if you want a website that sells your stuff successfully.

You may think e-commerce is simply a matter of common sense but there is really more to it than that. In fact, a lot of people believe as long as they have an awesome-looking website and a few great products, they can launch their site and take orders immediately. If this were the case, then one hundred percent of e-commerce entrepreneurs would be successful, which is not the case. So what makes a successful selling website? Knowing a few things may save you time and trouble right from the start, so read on!

Balance Demand and Supply

Whether you realize it now or not, there is a relationship between demand and supply which matters more than just the inventory. After a while, you may have more products than sales. Try and track the trend of how much sales your website is producing and purchase your inventory accordingly. If you have any experience with actual brick and mortar store inventory, there are limitations to floor space. Online, however, is another story. Ecommerce space has no limits. You may over or under buy inventory. It is best to try and figure out how many sales you have each quarter and make the necessary adjustments. This way, you won’t be stuck with a garage full of stuff ready to be mailed out.

Negotiate Firmly

When you are entering into a contract with someone, don’t think of just months down the road. Rather, think of years down the road. The reason is that it is easy to assume things will be fine when you first get into a contract with someone. When something goes wrong, however, the contract will determine the final outcome. Make sure you are aware of this and negotiate accordingly.

Advertise with Great Partners

When you partner with a poor advertising agency, your sales will perform poorly. If you decide to partner with an advertiser, ask for metrics like who their sponsors are, CTR, open rate, reach and other data. Your advertiser may look great on the surface but if they send out emails to your target audience a hundred times per week, what are the chances your potential customers will actually be pleased with this? That’s right, zero.

Create a Strategy for Promotions ASAP

A lot of ecommerce owners make a mistake of waiting until the last minute when sales suddenly drop to create a promotions strategy. Rather, determine immediately if you plan to be a seller for discounted items, premium items that never offer discounts or somewhere in the middle. Don’t offer sale after sale on hard to sell items until you determine the type of seller you want to be.

Measure Success with Accuracy

Since ecommerce is seasonal, compare each year against the other rather than quarter versus quarter. In other words, don’t compare the traffic between May and June. Instead, do this yearly.

Manage Your Email List Efficiently

Grow your list for email early and fast. This is one of the best methods of getting folks to visit your website. When you measure success, a great way t do this is through your add email list. If you don’t effectively manage your email list, you might find yourself the owner of a great website but with no people to reach. You don’t really want to have to pay outlets, sponsor content or put out ads just to get people on your site, do you?

Strategy Matters Less Than Features

Yes, you heard that right. It is easy to have a super impressive website with the sexiest, slickest and coolest features ever. However, in the long run, all of these fabulous features matters less than your overall strategy. Instead, you need to focus on the big picture. Leave the whistles and bells to the team in charge of products. What innovations can you apply to your site? What opportunities can you add into your white space? What else does the market need that you can fulfill?

Create a four-month goal sheet in which you list down all the goals you want to accomplish per month. Do this for every quarter of the year. Make sure the tasks get finished on the allotted deadline. If the months go by and your time has been spent doing features that are negligible, this won’t really do much for your overall business. Move your business forward by focusing on the important stuff.

Putting up an ecommerce store looks and sounds easy enough. However, it will literally pay for you to know what to do immediately to put your business on the most profitable course there is. Follow the advice stated here and enjoy great profits for years to come. Get in touch with a reliable e-commerce solutions provider for a successful turnout.

Without a doubt, both platforms are the kings of the ecommerce industry. Two of the most popular and powerful in the market today, WooCommerce and Magento. Both share great qualities of a selling platform, what to use still depends on you. This article will help you decide depending on your preference and how you see your ecommerce website in action.

The Similarities

Open Source

WooCommerce and Magento are open source products, meaning both are freely available to create a store that is professional and delivers results. With open source, the code can be modified to make needed changes in the frontend. One reason why these platforms are popular is that of its availability to the public. People are free to share their experience and encounters with the platform. This includes sharing source codes, experiments and of course, indulge in debates.

Forums

There are also many forums for both. Since WooCommerce is an open source WordPress plugin, there is an available support forum designated for it specifically with a wide range of topics and detailed documentation making it convenient for developers to use and look up. While Magento, as a large platform also appears in a lot of web forums especially in the ecommerce market. Both platforms assure you’ll get plenty of help from the community.  

Customization and Key Functionalities

Partly the reason for the success of WooCommerce and Magento is their capacity to give the users the ability to create their store the way they want it. The customization options of both are as wide as you imagine it to be. They support your business’ branding through plugins and add-ons that maximize the capabilities of your store. These platforms are brilliant for helping you make your online shop your own. Both also have the basic key functions of a fully functional ecommerce website: each has the cart, the product database and item details like prices and product photos.

WooCommerce

Pros

EASY TO USE WITH FAMILIAR WORDPRESS SETUP

Being a plugin for WordPress, a hugely popular CMS that supports 51% of the top million websites currently existing, WooCommerce is easy for past WordPress users due to its familiar user-friendly interface. With the said familiarity, it saves a huge amount of time in production and makes room for more creativity.

WooCommerce is a simpler, less technical kind of ecommerce platform, which is why it is best for businesses starting out. It has widgets giving customers the power to rate products and feature items like best sellers or those on sale.

GIVES MORE THAN JUST E-COMMERCE

WooCommerce doesn’t only give users the freedom to customize, it also gives the users plenty of opportunities to build a fully functional store, which is not only professional looking but also with integrated blog pages, and we all know how blogging is important for businesses to build their brand presence and manage reputation.

Even though WooCommerce is free, it doesn’t limit you in delivering a great and professional looking online store. WordPress lets you choose between an assortment of WooCommerce themes in the Woo Themes Store that you can also customize – making it your very own style. You can do this by changing color themes, adjusting the CSS styles and even edit the code and experiment your way to a more personalized look.

FLEXIBILITY AT ITS BEST

One of its biggest perks for an ecommerce newbie is WooCommerce’ flexibility when it comes to its products, without having to learn all about the technical side of it. Products can be categorized, assigned prices and independent attributes and all the other basic things an online store can do. In addition to this, WooCommerce can manage to sell a physical product or even virtual downloadable types.

Cons

SOME PLUGINS AND ADDONS ARE COSTLY

WooCommerce earns money from its add-ons and plugins that users would want for their online store like the rating functionality, the featured products, coupons and more. It might be very customizable but for the right price. Unlike Magento, all the functionality you wish your online store has can be coded and applied. All you need to have is a team of well-rounded developers to have it functional.

LIMITATIONS

Even though WooCommerce gives you the freedom to customize and add products and get it to be fully functional, it also has limitations like every other platform. WooCommerce has pre-order limitations and for some businesses, pre-orders are an essential part of their e-commerce functionality. It is said that with WooCommerce when a pre-order item is added in the cart, then any item previously added is removed. A pre-order item cannot co-exist with any other item in the same order. It also seems like this problem has not yet been resolved until now.

NOT COMPATIBLE WITH EVERY BUSINESS

Being limited with the functionalities that come free with the plugin, not all businesses are compatible with WooCommerce, sure it can do basic online selling and whatnot, but a large business with a huge database of products might be a problem. WooCommerce Variations can slow down the loading speed, and although it can handle the products, the speed would eventually be affected by it being only a plugin instead of a standalone platform.

Another thing, this being a WordPress plugin, a software update might cause some changes in your WooCommerce store. Sometimes a plugin isn’t too quick to adapt to the updates, leaving the online store to experience glitches and issues that can affect your business.

Magento

Pros

MULTIPLE STORES

The great thing about Magento is it can run multiple storefronts from a single backend system. Running multiple stores with multiple brands is possible with Magento. This allows you to maintain a harmonized backend.

OVERALL MANAGEMENT

Magento has a designated admin panel where you can manage transactions in your online store, adjust the shipping process and resolve issues. It also consists a list of important data of your business like product list of most searched products, most viewed, most popular – you can even see if a customer has placed an item in their cart but didn’t purchase.

You can also import thousands of items and modify the attributes. You can upload images, set conditional pricing and decide how your customers will see the product in their window.

3 AVAILABLE EDITIONS FOR DEDICATED USAGE

Enterprise

This is for the largest of e-commerce retailers. The scalability and ability to create and add new features and marketing strategies is impeccable.

Community

Magento Community is dedicated for tech-savvy users or developers who handle the coding and programming. Here, users can re-use codes and apply it to their own unique platforms to meet their business needs. Users can collaborate on formulating extensions, codes and other knowledge to maximize the Magento platform.

Cons

COMPLEX FOR BEGINNERS AND NON-CODERS

Setting up Magento is not as easy as WooCommerce. This platform runs on PHP with Java code. Users must know how to configure and make the store fully functional on their own. You also must have advanced skills in PHP to maximize the customization capability of Magento.

SLOW

Since it runs in PHP with Java codes, it’s given that this requires a lot of memory during the process. This means strong hardware is needed to run the software itself. A lot of businesses use cloud services but still struggle to obtain a high speed experience.

TIME-CONSUMING IN DEVELOPMENT

The complexity of the platform is beyond confusing at some point. Even with almost 4000 lines of free reusable codes, it is still very time consuming to be able to figure out a way around it. This uses an MVC approach which follows best web programming practices which make it difficult to work with. If you decide to hire a team of professionals to handle the development, the only downer is how much this would cost. Since it’s a complicated system, you better have a decent amount in hand.

Conclusion

All being said, WooCommerce or Magento, both are amazing platforms you can use for your online business. What to use between the two still depends on your business requirements. If you want your customers to have the full experience of a web store without limitations and you can code your way through PHP and Java or even pay people to do it for you, then nothing is stopping you from using Magento. If you think your business is in its infancy and does not require a lot in the processes other than selling your product and get customer feedback and you have the budget to purchase special features, we suggest using WooCommerce since it is also good for growing businesses, a few steps at a time.

Img c/o Pixabay

Magento is one of the powerful open-source e-commerce system available today. According to Google Trends, it is the most popular platform among Prestashop, Shopify, LiveChat, and BigCommerce from 2008 to present. Magento’s success can be attributed to its functionality, comprehensive features, and flexibility.

Magento is chosen by one out of four businesses, and has three versions—Magento Go, Magento Community, and Magento Enterprise. For this post, we will tackle Magento Community and Enterprise, so that you can decide which one makes more sense for your business needs and goals.

Magento Community

Magento Community is free, and it is what makes it so appealing for most business owners. There are no fees involved with using the platform. The only things you need to pay for are your domain name, web hosting services, and programmer’s fee.

The main features of Magento Community are:

Code-level Access – Magento Community allows code-level access to its users, which means that you can tweak them and integrate changes in your system easily. If you need added functionality, you can for to Magento Connect Marketplace and access 7,500 extensions to use, some of which are free while others are paid.

Multiple Stores – You can manage multiple stores within the platform. For instance, you can have different stores for different brands, retail, and wholesale. You can also have multiple store views for different customer groups. For instance, you can optimize your site to be mobile-friendly or you can let users view your site in a specific language. You can also have a specific site for users in a specific country.

Persistent Shopping Cart – This feature saves the content of a shopping cart until a customer comes back even in a different platform—may it be desktop, tablet, mobile. This feature allows you to create discounts and other offers for specific customers. For instance, wholesale customers get an automatic discount of 5% or an on-going offer of free shipping for all orders made within a specific time frame.

Result Filters – Magento allows better browsing through filters and restrictions in results. With this feature, users can filter results according to color, size, manufacturer, and price.

Different Payment Configurations and Options – You can set different payment options as well as shipping options for international clients.

Product Options – Aside from the product name, cost, weight, size, color, description, and retail price, you can also set tier prices, which are different pricing systems for different customer groups such as retail and wholesale buyers. Meanwhile, you can also set special prices for a specific duration, which is typically done during sales or promotions. You can also designate up-sells, cross sells, and related products to encourage higher sales.

SEO – Magento Community is integrated with SEO tools, so that your website will be indexed by search engines.

Couponing and Promotions – Aside from helping you manage your e-commerce business, Magento also allows you to create coupons and promotions and easily integrate them in the system.

Customer Accounts Management – Magento allows you to edit customer     information such as their address, passwords, and phone numbers.

Order and Sales Management – Magento Community allows you to go in and process orders and mark them according to progress.

Magento Community, as it is, is already packed with features that are helpful for businesses. However, Magento decided to step it up a notch and came up with the Enterprise version to meet a more extensive range of needs and goals.

Magento Enterprise

Magento Enterprise is essentially the paid version of Magento Community, and it costs $15,500 a year. It contains the same features as the free version, but it goes way than that and offers a wider range of functions. Let’s look at some of their key differences:

Large Catalog – Magento Enterprise is designed for businesses that handles a large number of products, while Magento Community is only good for medium-size businesses. It indexes large catalogs 80% faster and it can add new products immediately, whereas Community could take 12 minutes before showing a new offer.

Full-page Caching and Quicker Loading Times – Full-page caching is not available on Community. You can run a caching system on your site, but most hosting companies don’t support it. More so, you need to manually rebuild the cache when you add or make changes to your site.

Comprehensive Rollback System – When you accidentally changed something in the site and want to return to a previous version, you may be setting yourself up for a lot of work if you’re on Magento Community. Magento Community can only restore from the previous day’s backup, but what if you want to go back to an older version? Magento Enterprise allows you to roll back to a previous version of a page or any element in the site easily and quickly, letting you track changes and who made them.

Better Scalability – Magento Community works on a single server which handles DNS, PHP, caching, memory, database, etc. If you’re website has a lot of traffic, products, or buyers, the server may have a hard time keeping up. On the other hand, Magento Enterprise is designed for wider scalability, wherein those different functions are distributed to different servers.

Comprehensive tax calculation system – Magento Enterprise allows you to better manage tax rules, zones, and rates according to different rules per state or country. This can be beneficial if you have different retail locations and distributions across the United States and other parts of the globe.

Advance admin, logging, and access permission – With Enterprise, you can set up admins on a per site basis and restrict their access to other areas. It keeps a log of who goes into the site, who made changes, and who accessed customer information. It is an added security feature that allows for easier tracking.

Customer Management – Enterprise allows you to modify customer information quickly and divide them into different segments, which allows you to target your customers and offer a better shopping experience for them. Customer segmentation can be done by geographic information and order history.

Advance Shopping Experience – Enterprise helps you create a better shopping experience by allowing you to host private sales, offer gift and loyalty points, give store credits or online gift cards, provide gift wrapping services, and letting customers set up gift registries.

Return Management – When selling products is your business, you should always expect returns. In an online platform, it can be hard to stay on top of return merchandise, but Enterprise has that built-in within the system and makes it easier for you to manage.

Advance Searches – Enterprise is built with Solr search, which suggests queries and helps customers find what they’re looking for easily. A comprehensive search feature also helps lessen bounce rates.

Automated Emails – Email is a powerful tool to boost customer retention. Enterprise has an automated e-mail message trigger system for a number of purposes such as an abandoned shopping cart, follow-up emails for both new and existing customers, or any promotions that you’re currently running.

High Customization – Magento Enterprise offers a higher level of customization than Community. It allows you to create custom landing pages easily and integrate them into your advanced customer segmentation systems. Custom banners, codes, and discounts based on shopping cart rules can also be customized quickly in Enterprise.

Automated Product Suggestions – With Enterprise, you don’t have to manually set up cross-sells, up sells, and recommended products.

Customer and Technical Support – Enterprise allows you to have a customer service team on the back-end, which helps customers resolve issues they encounter while shopping on your website. Meanwhile, you also have access to Magento’s technical support team, which is not available in Community. If you experience any bugs or issues, Magento’s support team can assist you immediately, whereas if you’re in community, you may need to wait longer for answers and possible solutions from other users.

Auto-Generated Custom Coupons – Enterprise automatically generates coupons for specific types of customers, which they can use for different purposes.

The Right Choice

It all boils down to your business and goals. You need to be clear on what your needs are and determine which features you can and can’t do without. It’s also about careful projection of actual costs whether you choose to go with Community or Enterprise.

If you’re going with Community, how much time and money would you need to allot for added extension, features, and integrating them in your website. What if one add-on is not compatible with your hosting service or another extension?

Meanwhile, if you’re opting for Enterprise, consider the size of your catalog as well as your budget. While it’s handy to have advanced features within reach, you also need to gauge whether your business can handle the annual fee of running an e-commerce site on Magento Enterprise.

Regardless of whether you choose to go with Magento Community or Enterprise, your e-commerce site should have the essential elements to make it successful such as good hosting, products, content, design, and marketing campaigns that increase your visibility and strengthen your relationship with your clients.