bits & bytes - Ping! Zine Web Tech Magazine

SERVER SECURITY
Making the Right Choice
of Identity and Trust Assurance (ITA)
Infrastructure Can Boost E-commerce
by Steve Roylance
As the Internet continues to expand, so do the challenges
for new e-business brands wishing to differentiate
themselves from a multitude of “similar” providers, all
of whom are vying for a share of increased online business. With
a plethora of experts offering new and innovative ways of driving
additional traffic to emergent sites, and with the simplicity of
advertising campaigns such as Google Adwords, in most cases
“traffic generation” is not the biggest problem. “Conversion”
– taking a visitor and turning them into a customer – is one of
the most important hurdles that new e-business brands must
overcome.
Optimizing conversion in website traffic is a direct function of
managing consumer trust. The higher the consumer trusts a site, the
higher the conversion rates for that site. Well-established brands
rely heavily on their brand integrity, improved service levels
and expanded offerings to entice business from new consumers.
Larger brands therefore have effectively translated the internet
“web trust” model into a revenue-generating strategy.
However, “unknown brands” are at a significant “trust”
disadvantage, and they experience tremendous pressure to
differentiate themselves to survive. With no means to compete
directly with stronger, more established brands, new brands
are forced to focus on two alternative methods to grow market
share. The first, and rather more risky strategy, entails providing
higher and higher discount levels. By its very nature, it minimizes
margins and profitability, and more often than not, results in a far
greater failure rate. The alternative method relies on maximizing
the use of an ITA (Identity and Trust Assurance) infrastructure.
This method yields a far higher rate of return on investment, and
more importantly, it proves to be highly effective at building
loyalty in a shorter time frame.
So, what is Identity and Trust Assurance and why does it
succeed when compared to the alternative choice of offering
lower prices? For example, consider two competing restaurants,
both offering a similar selection of foods. If the higher-priced
restaurant actually has customers sitting down and eating, this
offers a far more powerful influence to potential new consumers
than the restaurant with lower prices. This clearly indicates how
trust and assurance can be more persuasive than price, and is one
of the reasons why many websites offer case studies (i.e. people
already eating) to provide reassurance to new customers. Even
more powerful tools and techniques to provide trust and assurance
should also be implemented, right across the website, to provide
consumers with recognized trust credentials that can help them
manage their risk. Some examples of these technologies include
high assurance SSL certificates – or a web seal to assure customers
that the site is “Hacker Proof.”
How Trusted Technologies Work
To date, one of the key reasons for the growth of the Internet
as an e-commerce engine has been the widespread deployment
of security technologies implemented within browsers and web
38 Ping! Zine Web Hosting Magazine