Is Your Store’s Network Secure?

ABA Systems Administrator Josh Harding shares a few tips to help booksellers improve the security of Wi-Fi networks.

“Setting up a store network probably isn’t the most exciting part of anyone’s day. It is, however, important both for the security of a business’s sensitive data and for the protection of its customers. Offering a guest network and implementing a Wi-Fi password are two ways to provide customers with Internet without giving them access to your data — or giving people access to theirs….”

Read the rest of Josh’s security tips HERE.

Fraud Alert

Roger Doeren of Rainy Day Books (Kansas City, MO) recently alerted us to a scam/fraud email he’d received and that all IndieCommerce stores should be aware of. Here is the message exactly as it appeared in Roger’s inbox, including typos and grammatical mistakes:

“Hi, I am Dxxxxs Sxxxxh, do you ship to Poland and accept US issued credit card as Payment ? ,concerning the shipping I have a shipper that you will contact regarding shipping ,they will pick up the items and deliver directly to my store doorstep without hassle and i will also like to know the types of credit card you accept.Let me know if can e-mail you what am interested in ordering. Thank You Dxxxxs Sxxxxh"

Another questionable email came to Leana's Books & More (Hermitage, PA). It was a request for 100 bibles costing $22.95 each that the buyer claimed would be donated to a church. The bookstore asked if the customer if they were local and the “buyer” deflected the question by asking for a discount. The email’s awkward sentence structure and lack of specificity raised a red flag for the bookseller, who did not fulfill the order.

Those are pretty typical online retail scams. If you receive emails like these or run into online scams that you want to share with other IndieCommerce stores, please forward them to [email protected]. In many cases, scam emails will hit multiple websites, so we attempt to notify our members as early as possible in order to prevent the fraud.

Are UK Titles Appearing on Your Website?

Gardners, Britain's leading independent wholesaler, has been part of the book supply chain for over 25 years. IndieCommerce is working with Gardners and Ingram on testing book data that includes Gardners titles, so don’t fret if you see some UK titles appear in your data feed. We will have more information for you as testing progresses.

Optimizing for Mobile

Many IndieCommerce and IndieLite websites are getting close to 40% of their traffic from customers on mobile devices.  In this Search Engine Watch article, author Andy Favell discusses how photos and graphics should be sized so that they don’t slow down mobile users. The bottom line is to keep your image file sizes as small as possible without lowering their quality. For more information on working with images click HERE.

For past editions of IndieCommunication, visit this page.