If you do any business online, you will always need to take your website’s security into consideration. This is especially true as we approach the holiday season. While most ecommerce website owners anticipate increased income during this time of the year, some will surely face serious problems and breaches, which could negatively impact sales in a big way.
What kind of problems can you expect?
The holiday season brings an increase in digital security problems, like fraud and identity theft. Some problems your business’ website may encounter include:
- A surge in traffic
- An increase in the demand for processing power
- A rise in hacking attempts
- Increase of fake or false identity usage
The first two are technical, while the latter are obviously malicious attacks. Needless to say, they all need to be tackled in different ways.
What can you do to secure your website?
Let us look at each problem and see what you can do to prevent them from ruining your holidays.
1. Traffic Surge
With any luck, the rise in online holiday traffic will be the reason you see an increase in profits and not a crashed website or loss of money or data.
To make sure that you can weather the increase in traffic, you should always go for the biggest webhosting plan that you can afford. With hosting prices so low these days, though, you really don’t have a good reason to not buy the best webhosting packages available.
These hosting solutions should allow you to handle any rise in traffic or, at the very least, let you scale up to a bigger package without any hassles.
2. Demand for More Processing Power
As more people arrive on your website, they will want to browse. Now, imagine all these people want to buy your products or order your services. If your business process involves bulky calculation procedures or makes too many requests to the servers, you will have a hung website that no one will spend any extra time on.
As we get closer to the holiday season, practice dry runs to test that your processes run smoothly from end to end. If you can, look into some ways you can cut out one or two unnecessary steps. Have a look at the media or other resource-intensive files on your site and see if you can’t get rid of them. At the very least, replace them with smaller versions.
Finally, run a test that will simulate hundreds, or even thousands, of visitors trying to use the website at the same time and see if they will all be able to check out without anything crashing.
3. Prevent Hacking Attempts
Hackers always target small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) because they know they can get away with it. Here’s why:
- For one, most SMBs won’t even know they have been hacked, or if an attempt has been made.
- Even when data has been lost, they won’t find out soon enough.
- Once the crime has been discovered, they may not be able to find out who the culprits are.
- Chances are the business owners won’t want to report to the authorities.
- Even when the authorities decide to get involved, it won’t be considered a high-priority crime, compared to larger corporation hacks – you’re small fish.
This all suggests that the best way to prevent hacking is by beefing up your online security. If your business doesn’t have an in-house expert, then it’s time to contract one for the duration of the holiday season. Listen to any advice they might have to offer and resolve any issues they point out. Alternatively, you can opt for a webhosting provider who will always be on top of things because their reputation is on the line, too.
4. Stop Fake Identities
The bad guys create fake identities by getting their information from two main sources – you and your customers. If you have weak security, you will be liable to hacks. But, if you’re sure you’re secure, you can go to your clients and teach them about how to stay safe online, not share any of the information they use to login to your site, and always make sure they are on your “https://” (secure) site before they even think of reaching for their credit cards. You, on the other hand, can install the latest ecommerce applications that ensure data security and encryption.
Secure your site today.
Make sure you’ve secured your website today by touching on all of these crucial areas. That way, both you and your clients will be able to enjoy the holiday festivities.
