Security is a huge topic for every online gift store owner.
It has been observed that about 60% to 65% of all e-commerce platforms use obsolete technologies and are prone to hacks.
If you are serious about providing a secure shopping experience, keep reading this article.
Here are simple steps of securing your gift store.
Want results like this from your online gift store
month after month? Keep reading!
Brute Force Attacks: How to protect your online store against them.
Brute force attack means trying out a whole bunch of combinations to get the right ID and PWD of your website.
Setting passwords with your favourite subject from school days or the name of your partner or parents seems tempting.
But it is a no-go if you want to protect your site against brute force attacks.
This also means not setting up user IDs like, admin that can be guessed easily.
As you can see, on one of the stores I’ve developed for the client, more than 250 (failed) brute-force attempts have been done in the last seven days alone!
The truth is that, when your gift store starts to really grow, more and more hackers will try to break in.
I mean, hundreds if not thousands of people try to break-in Facebook’s and Google’s systems daily.
We cannot really stop people from trying to break in. But we can damn well make sure that they don’t succeed.
No system is hack-proof a hundred percent. But we can make it really hard for people to get control of our online store.
In the last three to four years, I’ve had a fortune to closely work with Ex-Googlers, discuss data science and machine learning with Amazon’s Data Scientists.
The successful e-commerce businesses take every measure necessary to protect their e-commerce store.
Keep reading and you will know exactly what to do and how to do it.
Did you know that you can even change the login page URL of the website by using simple WordPress plugins like iThemes Security?
If the hackers do not have a login page URL, it becomes harder for them to force their way in!
Takeaway:
Protect your store against brute-force attacks by using WordFence or iThemes Security.
Ask your developer to configure these firewalls on your gift store.
Updates: Your protection against most of the tech vulnerabilities.
This is a big one!
The technology is constantly improving. It is not perfect and it never will be.
Hackers will find new ways to break-in and put the malicious code on your gift shop’s website.
The developers and tech enthusiasts like us will constantly try to patch those loopholes and improve the systems.
It is the game that never ends.
The latest versions of the plugins, themes and technologies usually have all the security measures developers have issued.
When the plugins and themes on your store are purchased from the original source and are up-to-date, you literally reduce the chance of getting hacked by 90% to 95%! Here’s an article on How to secure an E-Commerce Store.
90% to 95%! hacks and malicious redirects happen because of plugins and themes from untrusted sources. Obsolete versions of technologies on your website.
Update all the technologies and systems on your website to reduce the chance of getting hacked by 90% to 95%
This is a big one!
The technology is constantly improving. It is not perfect and it never will be.
Hackers will find new ways to break-in and put the malicious code on your gift shop’s website.
The developers and tech enthusiasts like us will constantly try to patch those loopholes and improve the systems.
It is the game that never ends.
The latest versions of the plugins, themes and technologies usually have all the security measures developers have issued.
When the plugins and themes on your store are purchased from the original source and are up-to-date, you literally reduce the chance of getting hacked by 90% to 95%! Here’s an article on How to secure an E-Commerce Store.
Takeaway:
Make sure the technologies used to develop your gift store are up-to-date. Technologies like, PHP, WordPress and the added plugins and themes.
Also, make sure that you use the plugins and themes downloaded from the original source.
Backups: They are a must and easier to implement than you think!
About five years ago, I lost a website that was making me $1349+ every month because I did not take the backup.
Lost all the data… 🙁
I have learned from that mistake. Never again did I take the backups less seriously.
You are investing a lot of money and your developers are investing their time to build this asset.
You hope to make tenfolds of money back from your online gifts store.
Don’t lose this by not taking backups.
Because get this.
In the development process, something always goes wrong.
I have been fortunate enough to work closely with Ex-Googlers.
I had interesting conversations with people from Amazon in the past.
I have had the pleasure to work with amazing, amazing Gift Store Owners and all that experience shouts one thing.
While working on a website, someday, something goes wrong. It happens with every project. Take backups obsessively.
There are 3 types of backups I recommend.
- On-Site Backups.
- Off-Site Backups.
- Local Backups.
On-Site Backups:
The backups that are taken on your server itself are called on-site backups.
You can use plugins like All in One WP Migration, UpdraftPlus or Duplicator Pro to take on-site backups.
Off-Site Backups:
Off-site backups mean the backups that are saved on a different server.
If anything happens to your server, then we can just restore this backup and everything will be okay. Previously suggested plugins also offer off-site backups options. You can also use ManageWP for this purpose.
Local Backups:
When you create a backup file, you can download it to keep it safe locally.
Please contact your developer to provide you with this functionality. You can also use CodeGuard to take backups of your server.
I personally recommend you (strongly) to have the functionality of daily automated backups.
The above-mentioned plugins offer this functionality for an affordable price.
I provide daily automated backups to every gift shop owner I develop an online store for. It’s a free add-on.
Need my help building your own Online Gift Store? Feel free to reach out here.
Takeaway:
Take obsessive backups. At least once a day.
You can never be too careful when it comes to protecting your online gift store.
Ask your developer to configure daily on-site and off-site backups of your complete system.
All the gift store owners who I help build their gift store, get free lifetime of daily automated backups.
Many times, to some of the bigger gift stores, I have also provided an automated backup cycle of six hours!
Unless a meteor hits and destroys the land of the living, you will probably never lose the orders of your customers!
If the lifetime backups sound interesting, keep reading. At the end of this training, you will have an option to opt-in.
Off-Site Payments
They say, Paypal solved the problem of online payments. They are right. But nowadays, there are a lot of different and better options.
Want to make the process of ‘making payments’ really easy for your customers? This section is for you!
Here’s a marketing principle that most of the brand name commerce-stores follow.
Yes! Walmart, Big Bazaar, Patanjali and all the big names.
The more choices you will give, the fewer purchases will happen.
More choices will only confuse your customers.
You will see that when there are three flavours of Jams, more people can choose what do they want to buy. When there are a hundred flavours, it is kind of a hassle to choose!
Same thing with the payment methods.
Keep only two to three payment options that you KNOW people use.
For Ex, In India, we’ve observed across more than 20,000 gift purchases, people really prefer UPI, Wallets like Google Pay and PayTM and they love COD!
So many people also choose to pay via NetBanking and card.
When you have that data, it becomes easy to choose which payment methods to integrate on your website.
Keep payments simple. That would boost the sales of your gifts store.
We would suggest you choose one between
1. PayTM
2. RazorPay
3. Instamojo
Click above to go the in-depth guide of how to integrate these payment methods on your gifts store.
These payment solutions offer off-site payments. For example, the pop-up of RazorPay.
It gives the illusion to your customers that the payments are happening on your site only. But the transactions take place on the secure server of RazorPay.
This means a secure, safe and beautiful shopping experience for people. This is the next best thing to investing millions on developing a secure platform like Amazon and Flipkart.
Click the button below to continue to the next section. We are going to discuss how you can make your gift store load blazing fast!
