How to make your online shopping carts safer

If you have an online store or are planning on opening up an online store then you have probably run across online shopping carts. But the problem that many people seem to be having with online shopping carts is safety. Many people are trying to find ways to make their online shopping carts safer for their customers because the programs they are using just don't do enough. The good news is that even if you purchase a shopping cart program from a software manufacturer there are certain steps that you can take to make your online shopping cart safer for your customers.

Difficulty rating: Moderate

Step one:
The first thing that you are going to want to look for when trying to make your online shopping carts safer is the payment options. Though there are a number of payment collection methods available, such as person to person services, 3rd party payment services, credit card merchant accounts, it is a good idea to include as many as possible. The reason that you want to include as many options as possible is that it provides them with choices that they can use to help themselves feel safer. Keep in mind that not everyone feels comfortable sharing their credit card info or bank account info. You should strive to at least be able to except credit cards since they are the most popular but there is a segment of online shoppers that will not enter their credit card information and will only shop at sites that offer other means of payment, for example PayPal.

Step two:
The next thing that you want to look into when making your online shopping carts safer is that everything, including personal information is done under a secure online checkout. The reason for this is that most of your customers are aware of the fact that payment information, such as credit card processing, should always be done in a secured (https) environment. It is also highly recommended to have all of the personal information, including name, address, phone, etc, collected in a secure environment as well. If you have your own secure certificate there is no reason why this should not be done. If you are considering a commercial shopping cart that doesn't secure this part of the check out, consider looking for a different one. Many customers will go ahead and place their order even if the shopping cart isn't secure but there is no reason to lose customers that expect to see this security.

Step three:
Another thing that you want to stay away from is unnecessary pages that offer more things to sell or click through when processing your order. The reason for this is that these unnecessary clickthroughs can cause problems, such as accidental clicking or purchasing and some of them can even take the customers to an unsecured website and ask for personal information. If your shopping cart program has these features you are going to want to go with a different program.

Step four:
The next thing that you are going to want to include to make your online shopping cart safer for your customers is a clear and concise privacy policy. With this policy you are going to want to make sure that it is clearly visible to all of your customers so that they know what to expect. What you are going to want to do is to include a link to this policy on every page that your customers visit and then you are going to make sure that you follow this privacy policy. Many people are concerned about how their information is going to be used and many others are concerned about internet privacy in general.