Here is some data from the Nielson group on smartphone penetration:

For The Young, Smartphones No Longer A Luxury Item

If you look at the 18-24 year old segment, 56% of those surveyed own a smartphone.  So, if we can extrapolate out, that is quite a wave of mobile traffic coming to your website.  Your customers may not be using mobile devices to access your sites today, but this indicates that things are changing fast.  Within the next 5 years, most websites will need to be designed for mobile, OR have a second site aimed at mobile users.

One thing I do think is that many sites can be adapted to display reasonably well on a mobile device.  So maybe that’s the play to make – otherwise you’ll be maintaining 2 sites, and compromising your content layout and structure.

I’ve added a new page on the site:

http://www.robertswebforge.com/payment_gateway_comparisons.php

which attempts to make it easier to figure out which payment provider to sign up with.  You need a provider to accept credit cards, and a gateway for online payments.  (Most offer both merchant and gateway accounts if you need them).

The fees charged vary, so I’m attempting to provide you a clear idea what you’ll be losing…err, paying each month from your sales.  It’s not 100% accurate, but should point you in the right direction.

I intend to add more providers to this list and update it as time allows – there  are a lot to choose from, but I will stick to the bigger ones that I trust.  I work with a lot of e-commerce sites, using various payment gateways, so I’ve heard the good, bad, and ugly about the process.

Hope this helps you in getting your e-commerce costs down!

Here’s a link to 25 of the top common passwords:

Stop using these 25 passwords today

The article lists out the passwords and many common variations.  For instance taking a word like “hello” and substituting o for 0 (zero) and e for 3, like “h3ll0” is no solution either.  It’s just too easy for hackers to break.

A good rule of thumb is to always add some “randomness” into your passwords – like 315$ – I just made that up.  add that to a word like “hello” and you have something that is fairly difficult to break – hello315$.

That said, I wonder how many passwords are stolen using “social engineering” methods – like copying the post-it note stuck to your computer, or posing as a technical support person, and just asking for it.  I think the traditional “brute-force” approaches are less common today, because too many systems are safeguarded from those.

Anyway, it’s never a bad idea to implement secure passwords.  Too much critical information is out there.

Interesting article that touches on PCI – the guy interviewed here, Gray Taylor, suggests what has to happen in order to reduce fraud in the credit card arena.

Fighting Fraud: Banks, Merchants Must Align

He seems to be concluding that the PCI standards are failing, and that banks and merchants must move to stronger measures – perhaps fingerprint scanning, or other biometrics to verify a customer’s identity.

So the question is whether the PCI standards will be ditched, or simply added to in the future.

After a lot of research and testing, I’m pleased to ControlScan services for PCI compliance. They have a process in place to assist you in obtaining and maintaining PCI compliance for your website.

There are two main steps to obtain PCI compliance.

1.  A questionnaire about your business and card-handing practices.

2.  A remote scan of your server, to determine any vulnerabilities that might exist.

This service is $249 / year, which allows you to scan your site quarterly.   My recommendation to my ecommerce clients at this point it this:  Try the service for 1 year – fill out the questions, and scan your server.  This will help you button up your site, and when your merchant account provider asks you about PCI compliance, you are ahead of the game.  So far PCI enforcement seems pretty lax, but that could change any time.  Having some PCI documentation under your belt will also help you if there are any security issues.

The site is here – read about the included services, and sign up using the buy now button on the left.