The example site presented in this book has taken a deliberate generic approach to show you
the most common e-commerce techniques.
To really lift yourself above the competition, however, you don??™t need fancy features or
Flash movies??”you just need to understand, attract, and serve your customers better than
anybody else. This book will help you do that.
Risks and Threats
All this might make it sound as if your e-commerce business can??™t possibly fail. Well, it??™s time
to take a cold shower and realize that even the best-laid plans often go wrong. Some risks are
particularly relevant to e-commerce companies, such as
??? Hacking
??? Credit card scams
??? Hardware failures
??? Unreliable shipping services
??? Software errors
??? Changing laws
You can??™t get rid of these risks, but if you know about them, you can defend your site from
them.
An important way to protect your site from many risks is to maintain backups. You already
know backups are important. But if you??™re anything like us, when it gets to the end of the day,
saving five minutes and going home earlier seems even more important. When you have a live
web site, this simply isn??™t an option. Two words: Back up (your web site). Every day.
We don??™t talk much about the legal side of e-commerce in this book because we are programmers,
not lawyers. However, if you are setting up an e-commerce site that goes much
beyond an online garage sale, you??™ll need to look into these issues before putting your business
online.
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