While launching an online store can be easier than opening a bricks and mortar premises, it is still vulnerable to potential risks that could destroy your company.
As no business will be free from various threats, you must take the steps to safeguard your online venture, regardless of whether you’re running a brand from your home or an office space.
To help you protect your budding brand, find out about the four big risks to your e-commerce business.
- Online Security Threats
Sadly, there are various online security threats that could damage your company’s finances, destroy its reputation and cause legal repercussions for your business.
It is critical to familiarize yourself with the different dangers, so you can find the appropriate solution to stop them in their tracks.
For example, your business could fall vulnerable to:
Secure your network, data and all devices by investing in many cybersecurity solutions, such as antivirus programs, encryption, strong passwords, firewall solutions, and employee education, plus more.
- Customer Disputes
Unfortunately, customer disputes can impact your business in a variety of ways. In addition to losing their loyalty, it could potentially lead to poor word of mouth or negative online reviews, which could damage your brand reputation and revenue.
For this reason, it is important to rectify a problem with a customer as soon as possible, which can protect your brand and potentially help your business to secure their future loyalty.
It is also worth bearing in mind that your online venture might also be vulnerable to compensation claims. For example, if a customer experiences an injury after buying one of your products online, they might embark on a personal injury claim. It is, therefore, wise to invest in the right protection, get business insurance by Next Insurance to protect your company’s finances.
- Intellectual Property Issues
While you might have spent a substantial amount of time and money developing website images, creating logos, and producing original videos, it can only take a minute for an individual or business to steal your content.
For this reason, you must attempt to secure your intellectual property by:
- Trademarking a phrase, word, symbol or design
- Copyrighting original works (e.g. music, videos, sound recordings, literary pieces, and graphic works)
- Registering a trade secret (such as survey results, customer lists, etc.)
- Filing a patent
It can prevent your online business from embarking on fruitful and lengthy court battles, while preserving your original ideas, content and innovations.
- SEO Mistakes
Many e-commerce businesses will endeavor to climb their way up the search engines, so they can increase their web traffic, improve brand recognition and generate many sales.
Yet, various search engine optimization (SEO) mistakes can lead to you catapulting down the search engine results pages (SERPs) or being indexed altogether from Google.
For this reason, it is vital to embark on white hat tactics that will ensure you ethically rank at the top of the SERPs.
You’ll also need to pay close attention to changes to Google’s algorithm, which they can update at any time, as a failure to comply with their new requirements could lead to a significant drop in web traffic overnight.