by SalesCart Team

Many people new to ecommerce don’t realize many web stores and online ecommerce websites can be completely turned “off” and not just by some random hacker, but by their very own customers!  In fact, customers who are highly security conscious may already have their browsers set so that your shopping cart and Internet store is running completely dark or doesn’t operate correctly as you intend.

The result:  an ecommerce storefront that
just plain doesn’t work. 

Even worse, most merchants will probably never even hear about it and never even know about it.  Very busy Internet shoppers and potential customers will rarely contact a web merchant to tell them,

“Hey just wanted to let you know I tried to order something from your store, and couldn’t, oh well, so I bought the same item from someone else.  Have a nice day.”

So, a merchant can think that their store is working perfectly fine; because for them, and their friends and families, it does.  However, they could be loosing customers every day.  How many customers are they losing?   Who really knows for sure?  It could be 10, 100, or even thousands of lost customers per day or per month.

This has to be a rare problem that most ecommerce storefront solutions don’t have — right?  We are sorry to have to tell you, but no.  You’d be surprised at how many ecommerce store front software solutions exist on the market that suffer from this deficiency in design.  It could be on the order of over 40%-50% or above.  Also, the cooler the solution may seem to work, the more likely it could have this problem.

Hackers know this too

This is not just a problem with websites that don’t work for merchants.  It’s also a security problem.  In these cases, hackers can use this ability to exploit your web store.  By turning certain parts of your online store on and off at key points during the process, they can by-pass certain things your store would normally do that are critical.  These things could include determining the price of an item or verifying a discount.  It could also be other things, like verifying security elements.  In these cases, a hacker could obtain items at different prices than you list them for, or break other parts of the shopping cart, to exploit security data.

Does your ecommerce solution have this problem?

Are you considering an ecommerce solution to build your business on that has this problem?  Alternatively, do you already have an online store that you’ve built your business on that might suffer from this design deficiency?  Did you already lose thousands of dollars in sales and opportunity costs on an existing store that you don’t even realize?  All the while, your competitors might have gobbled up those sales on their own working store fronts.  Well, we want to arm you with the knowledge of verifying this on your own.  If you want to check and see if a web store front that you currently use, or are considering using, suffers from this problem, it’s pretty easy to check for.

How to test your web store or ecommerce solution
First, set your browser to be more secure

In Internet Explorer: Click on the Gear icon in the upper right hand side of the browser, and select Internet Options.  Then select Security.  Make sure Internet is highlighted.  Click on the Custom Level button and scroll down to where it says: Scripting>>Active Scripting and select “Disable”, then Ok and Ok.  [Note:  To re-enable: follow the same process but choose “enable” instead.]

In Google Chrome: Click the chrome menu in the top upper right hand corner of your browser that looks like 3 lines, Select Settings, scroll to the very bottom and Click Show advanced settings, Under the “privacy” section, click the Content Settings Button, select “Do not allow any site to run JavaScript”.  [Note: To re-enable: follow the same process but choose “Allow all sites to run JavaScript (recommended)”]

Next, using your browser go view the store

Visit your web store or the web store that you want to check by typing in the address in your browsers address bar.  In some cases, functionally might still work but not as well as before hand.  If that is the case, its not really a problem.  If it at least works, that’s great.   Also, the further the customer gets, the less we really have to be concerned.  This is because the further the customer goes in our checkout, the more likely they will contact us if there is a problem because they have invested more time.

1. Does the product catalog still appear or does it suddenly show no products?
2. Try adding an item to the cart. Does the product get added to the cart?
3. Select a product with attributes or options. Can you still see the product attributes and options or do they suddenly disappear or quit working?

What you should be most concerned with is if the entire catalog of products no longer works at all or is completely not displayed.  Also, if something important like the “option/attributes functionality” suddenly stops working, that is also very bad.  If you can’t add an item to the shopping cart at all, wow, that’s even worse.

The key is that a paranoid customer can set their browser ANYWAY they want to!

With today’s Security issues plaguing the Internet, being paranoid is really just about being 100% secure.  When your customer turns these settings off (as we show you how to do above), it keeps them 100% safe from catching all kind of Internet virus, worms, Trojans, and malware from websites.   However, you want your ecommerce shopping cart to take your customers order in any and every case.  Your goal should be to NEVER lose any orders.

If you are lucky enough that a customer actually calls to complain, the additional time taking support calls can be very time consuming.   A customer asking why they can’t see products or why they can’t add products takes valuable time away from the rest of your business.  If you are having to explain to customers what they must do to make your store front to work on their browser, you are making excuses.

“Dear Customer, please open up your browser and make it less secure so you can use our web store.”

This is a bit at odds to feeling 100% secure in the first place at your online business.  Finally, customers know they can find alternatives to your products via Google or Yahoo search in just a few seconds.   So for the sake of your business, your best practice is to avoid ecommerce solutions entirely that stop working correctly based on a customer browser setting that you have no control over.

Stores we’ve tested

We’ve just begun testing stores but here are a few stores so far.  These are the ones we were able to reproduce this behavior in so far as of this writing:

• Square-up.com stores stop working
• Wix.com stores stop working
• Ravox.com stores stops working

Ecommerce storefront software we know that do not have this problem.

• SalesCart.com

What about yours?  We will work to expand this list going forward.