WITH ONLINE FRAUD SURGING DURING THE PANDEMIC, RETAILERS MUST IMPROVE THEIR AUTHENTICATION TO COMBAT THE ISSUE AND BUILD CUSTOMER TRUST
COVID-19 has driven a phenomenal spike in e-commerce, with the recent surge in online shopping expected to add an additional £5.3bn to UK e-commerce sales this year to make a total of £78.9bn, according to Edge Retail Insights. Even though retailers are re-opening their doors, people continue to shop online, causing two main issues for retailers:
1. With consumers forced to do their shopping online, retailers that offer a sub-standard shopping experience, such as unwieldy account opening or checkout processes, are shooting themselves in the foot. Having an inferior e-commerce platform has been shown to have a seriously negative impact on sales, with an Akamai study showing that every 100-millisecond delay in website load time can hurt conversion rates by 7%. Furthermore, Callsign research revealed that, in April alone, 20% of consumers switched to other brands due to a bad online shopping experience (e.g. failed payments, complicated log-in, etc.).
2. With the shift of physical traffic from store to online, fraudsters are also focusing their efforts toward online channels. We have found that fraudsters have realised that retailers with dedicated mobile apps generally have more up-to-date security technology and that fraudsters are focusing more on web channels, which have been identified as the legacy weak spots in a retailer’s technology infrastructure. You only have to look at figures from Action Fraud, which show that 16,352 people have already fallen victim to online shopping and auction fraud during lockdown, to realise the extent of the problem.
So, in this context, how does a retailer ensure that shoppers have secure and frictionless experiences online, when that very friction is normally there to keep customers safe from criminals?
This article was also published in The Retailer, our quarterly online magazine providing thought-leading insights from BRC experts and Associate Members.
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