When Investing in your E-commerce solutions now adays it is important to do your homework. You must be wise when picking one out and not choose something because it is convenient and easy. Here are some reasons I believe it is smart so spend a little time investing in research.

1. Privacy – You will be giving the people your personal information cc numbers, account numbers, address, and possibly your social security number.

2. Reputation and Quality – If the company you choose doesn’t have a good reputation with the public it could quickly decrease your reputation on the web. (search them on google, if they have double charged tons of people and their are a lot of nasty reviews on the web about them don’t choose them. You will see that rarely is there a company without bad reviews but pick the one with good reviews and only a couple bad… accidents do happen and these are excusable but there needs to be explanation.)

3. Ease of Use – It needs to be easy to use and to integrate into your website. (I have left websites because it looked sketchy on their e-commerce. Generally if your site stinks and so does your e-commerce solution I don’t buy from you plain and simple may sound mean but I can afford to take the risk.)

4. Protection – What happens when there are faulty charges or orders, or somone rips you off… Will there be reimbursement etc? (check out how they handle these things)

5. Security – How does the e-commerce company claim to protect / encrypt transactions and your sensitive information. Can they prove it?

There are an array of things to look out for concerning safety with your’s and other’s money on the web. Recently I ordered a product and the company double charged me for it, I find out it is their e-commerce solution and it seems to be a pretty popular situation and they are a pretty popular e-commerce company both with big companies but also with complaints about charges that are questionable. (It’s called DigitalRiver.com if you were wondering). Working as a web designer I want to know who your e-commerce solution is and if they are reliable… because you CAN get charged now a-days for just typing your cc info before you push any buttons some companies start processing ASAP and seem to give you a way to stop in the process but really they have already determined to charge you even if you cancel.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 18th, 2009 at 2:23 am and is filed under Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.