eCommerce

Automated threats, ranging from account takeover, credit card fraud, web scraping, API abuses, Grinch bots, and DDoS attacks, are a persistent challenge for the eCommerce industry, according to a new report.

Cybersecurity company Imperva has conducted a 12-month analysis of threats targeting the retail industry. A continued barrage of attacks on retailers’ websites, applications, and APIs throughout the year and during peak holiday shopping times is a continued business risk for the retail industry.

The last three years have presented particularly unsettled waters for eCommerce leaders to navigate. eCommerce was already transforming, but the pandemic led to a period of massive growth that forced rapid change. At the same time, the fallout from events like Brexit caused operational challenges for many organizations. To cope, eCommerce leaders had to accelerate their digital plans -- meaning many discarded existing strategies and condensed three to four years of digital transformation into a matter of months.

In the short term, this "kneejerk" digitalization allowed businesses to spin up an eCommerce website or app quickly. But in the longer term, many risk being left with a technology stack that is neither futureproof nor fit for purpose. In fact, despite the increase in spend, our research finds businesses lost an average 10 percent in revenue due to downtime and website performance issues in the last two years. That’s the kind of loss that cannot be absorbed more than once.

Staying competitive in the eCommerce landscape requires agility and flexibility to pivot business strategies and adjust to changing consumer preferences and economic conditions.

Alternative data from websites, desktop/mobile applications, and other online sources gives managers the critical information they need to make effective decisions. While once confined to investors, eCommerce businesses are also adopting alternative data to refine their marketing strategies, improve product offerings, obtain demographic insights, track brand mentions, and improve SEO rankings.

The pandemic led to a boom in online commerce, but as it fades away enterprises are keen to find new ways to understand and reach their customers, at the same time as addressing increasing privacy concerns.

Customer experience company Acquia commissioned Vanson Bourne to seek the views of 2,000 consumers and 200 marketers in the UK and the US on the digital marketing landscape.

Online advertising is big business and it inevitably follows that where there's money to be made the fraudsters and cybercriminals won't be far behind.

We spoke to Jacob Loveless, CEO of eCommerce specialist Edgemesh, to find out more about why ad fraud has become such an issue and what businesses can do to combat it.

The internet has changed the way that most people shop and increasingly we want to get the things we've ordered fast.

This has given rise to on-demand commerce, with deliveries supported by armies of gig workers. But it's also driven rapid technological innovation in the logistics sector. We spoke to Kashyap Deorah, founder and CEO of logistics app specialist HyperTrack, to learn more about the new the phenomenon of 'instant commerce' and what it means for both enterprises and consumers.

The virtual world of the Metaverse is already attracting people to attend virtual events and play games. It also has the potential for businesses to make money -- research from McKinsey suggests it could be a $5 trillion industry by 2030.

However businesses are still wary of the additional challenges, particularly with regard to security. New research carried out by YouGov for app security company F5 shows six out of 10 respondents say the Metaverse has introduced security complexities that their organization may not be equipped to address.

A new study shows that online sellers remain optimistic about the current eCommerce market despite consumers cost of living concerns and an impending recession.

The research, from eCommerce helpdesk specialist eDesk and based on a survey of over 200 online sellers in the US, shows that 53 percent of sellers expect to see an increase in online shopping over the next six months.

Revenue loss from bot-driven account fraud and web scraping continues to increase according to a new report, with 69 percent of companies that have a bot management solution report losing more than six percent of their revenue due to account fraud this year.

Account fraud includes account takeovers and new account fraud, where fraudsters create fake accounts to gain access to loyalty programs and take advantage of promotional discounts.

A new survey of 200 UK ecommerce leaders at enterprise organizations with more than £10m ($11.5m) revenue reveals that, on average, businesses lost 10 percent in revenue due to downtime and website performance issues in the last two years.

This is despite increased investment, with 48 percent of respondents saying their spending on eCommerce solutions has increased in the last two years, according to the study by enterprise software company Box UK.

New research from customer engagement platform Twilio shows older consumers are being left behind when businesses digitize their customer facing operations.

Although consumers over 65 hold significant digital shopping power, with 76 percent relying on online shopping in the UK, only 12 percent say they feel understood by brands they interact with digitally.

In today’s modern eCommerce world, consumers have more digital-first and convenient ways of shopping than ever before. Among the critical technologies that have made this possible are Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) which give retailers the ability to transform their systems and processes in quick and efficient ways. Retailers need to reach as many users as possible and to facilitate this they need a well-constructed interface between the eCommerce site and the consumer.  

Amazon arguably kicked off the API explosion with Jeff Bezos’ instructions in 2002: "All teams should expose their data and functionality through service interfaces and communicate with each other through these interfaces which should be designed from the ground up to be externalisable."

Researchers at anti-bot specialist Kasada have recently uncovered the use of 'Solver Service' bots -- an API-as-a-service tool created to bypass the majority of bot management systems.

By 'solving' a bot detection system's defense, these allow enterprising cybercriminals to now commercialize the Solver Service they deciphered and sell it for a profit. This means buyers can successfully conduct automated bot attacks without any technical skills -- and without having to worry about what bot defenses a site may have in place.

Providing a digital identity to create an online account or complete a transaction is becoming more commonplace globally and consumers are now expecting this as part of their engagement with a business.

Research carried out by Opinium for Jumio surveyed 8,000 adult consumers split evenly across the UK, US, Singapore and Mexico. It finds that 57 percent now say they have to use their digital identity 'constantly' or 'often' to access their online accounts.

Third-party cookies are already blocked by Firefox and Safari and will also be blocked by Google Chrome by the end of 2023. But new research from Twilio shows 81 percent of companies still rely on them, while 85 percent of consumers want brands to use only first-party data.

The change is likely to bring more issues for brands that rely on such cookies to identify and track visitors to their websites. More than half (55 percent) of companies say they are not fully prepared for a cookieless world, and 42 percent predict that the impending changes will lead to lower returns on their marketing spend.