Igniting Business Blog

In a blog post last month, we discussed a few small business cyber security statistics that showed the shocking truth about small business’ vulnerability to cyberattacks. This week, we’ll discuss a couple of specific cyber threats and how you can better protect your small business from future attacks.

Websites are filled with images. Big, small, and some with stunningly high definition. Although website visitors may want to see all those images, they often do not wish to wait long for the images and the remainder of your webpage to load. Conversely, if your small business website only contains tiny, low-resolution images, it might load quickly, but is not nearly as visually appealing and can give the impression that your brand is low-quality. Two important image techniques exist to create fast, visually appealing websites.

The world wide web has brought numerous benefits to the world, including technological advancements and unimaginable global connections. Unfortunately, it has also led to the rise of cybercrimes that can have detrimental effects. Recent Juniper research revealed that in 2019, such cybercrimes resulted in losses of approximately $2 trillion.

The evolution of the World Wide Web has made globalization and digitization easier, leading to an increase in the number of people and devices that access the internet. In a bid to leverage this, many companies have taken their businesses online by investing in content marketing, websites, SEO, social media, PPC, and other digital marketing tools to gain more market share. This has made online marketing an integral aspect of the marketing strategy of many companies.

We often hear about the large, nationwide company security breaches, whether it be database hacks or publicly shared user information, and it can sometimes seem like only the big corporations are targets. However, a recent study shows 43% of website hacks target small businesses. Victims of cyberattacks come in all sizes, but websites with lightened security measures make for easier targets.

First impressions matter. Ensuring your web design meets the user expectations should, therefore, be a priority. With the majority of consumers turning to the web to find specific products and services, implementing the latest web trends to ensure your web design and business stands out from the rest is critical to growing your client base.

In a recent blog post, we discussed the importance of using high quality photos on e-commerce websites and for other marketing purposes. One way to implement high quality imagery in your e-commerce site is to use 360-degree product photography. If you have ever visited an automobile manufacturer website, you have likely seen 360-degree images in action for both exterior and interior views. 360-degree product photography has become a popular, consumer-driven trend that is rapidly becoming prominent.

Online shopping is a consumer trend that is continuously growing. Traditional retailers, small stores, and boutiques might believe it hard to compete with Amazon and other large e-commerce companies. However, if you have a brick and mortar store, relying heavily on local customers, you can easily use e-commerce to bring those online shoppers into your store.

Business owners often read about hacking attacks that impact major international corporations. Based on those dramatic reports, owners of small businesses might assume that one advantage of being small is that there is little to tempt a cyber-criminal to hack their website.

While you may try to avoid it, sometimes your e-commerce business will run out of a particular item. How you deal with out of stock inventory can be significant to your online brand and customer satisfaction. In this post, we will provide insight on why it is important to have a strategy to deal with out of stock inventory. We will also provide some tips on how to avoid permanently losing customers over a temporary situation.