As owner of a company that offers gift cards as one of its flagship products, I am obligated to question the viability of our product against fraud. However, it is important to distinguish between fraud and security before we get into this discussion. Security involves implementing all the known techniques and available technologies to ensure the system and the card information is secure and inaccessible to the outside world. For example, card numbers are generated using the same algorithms that credit card companies use. This ensures numbers can never be duplicated or replicated. The system is hosted in a PCI compliant environment and is highly resistant from penetration by cyber criminals. Cards can be voided and new ones generated if needed. There are several other standard security measures in place that I won’t mention (for security reasons). On the other hand, unlike credit cards, gift card fraud and theft are much easier to detect and control in gift card systems. For one, gift cards by their very nature of being non-universal don’t provide anywhere near the same incentive to the bad guys as credit cards do. Why go through the trouble and risk of stealing a gift card number when the value is usually between $20- $100. Plus, they are limited to a single retailer’s merchandise and one can always follow the ship-to address in order to locate the bad guy. In addition, a secret recipe of checks and balances have been baked into Commerce Generation’s gift card system to identify and report suspicious activities. In conclusion, I can say with confidence that gift cards will prevail the fraud war with flying colors. Just consider all the security and fraud issues that surround credit cards and yet they continue to be heavily used. I see the same and perhaps greater success for gift cards.

Many of the store owners I have worked with have that one silver bullet feature that they want to add to their online store. That one feature they believe will double their sales so they spend valuable time, energy and resources to get it just right – move it two pixels to the left, change the color, the labels, now make it work just like I first said I didn’t want, and on and on and on.  Time and money is spent while they try to get it “perfect” the first time. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise when after all the hard work is done the results are less than expected and many times even negative.  The reason is that what starts as a “great” idea, turns into something that is complicated and confusing to customers because it was over-analyzed and false assumptions were made about what the customer wants. In essence it gets fly specked to death. The customer can’t use it, they don’t like it, they don’t understand it and there you go –they leave the site frustrated and angry. Sale lost.

What I suggest to my clients is to implement your ideas as quickly as you can even if it means holding back on some of the features you think would be great to have. You will quickly find out if the concept you’re trying to introduce is welcomed by customers or not. Once you establish this, you can use their feedback and your site analytics to make the needed adjustments to get it just right.

Remember, no single idea is ever going to double your sales. It’s the culmination of all your ideas, studying your store analytics and lots of hard work that over time will make your online store a success.