E-commerce News

Customers may be liable for online fraud in UK banks

IT security experts have warned that UK online banking customers could soon be liable for any money lost through identity theft, if they do not take reasonable steps to ensure their PCs are secure. Web security vendors argue that banks need

The case for pushing more liability onto customers could grow stronger if banks also provide antivirus and anti-spyware protection. There is the potential that the banks will go back to the consumer and state that they have offered you good practice guidelines online and 12 months free antivirus. If you don't make use of these they may refuse to pay out. However, Les Fraser, security adviser for the British Computer Society, said that banks could suffer a customer backlash if they take such steps. "If financial organizations get too strict on the security side there'll be a pushback on the consumer side," he predicted.

Responsibility for the safety of the Internet as a platform for ecommerce and access to services should also lie with the government. There is a responsibility on the individual, but the government should also treat e-crime seriously. Currently, the penalties are not that great and trying to get the police authorities interested is difficult. Richard Starnes, president of the International Systems security Association, added that funding for specialist computer crimes officers in local police departments is set to expire. This, together with the recent absorption of the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) into the serious Organized Crime Agency (Soca), means there is a "black hole" for the investigation of online crime.

Going global with your small business

Think taking your small business global is mission impossible? Think again. Communications advances are making globalization a reality, and it's the small business owners of the world who are busting borders and realizing greater growth potential. Nearly a quarter of a million U.S. small businesses are exporting goods, according to GlobeTrade.com research. What's more, small businesses with fewer than 500 employees export roughly US$182 billion a year, or 29 percent of all exports. Exports mean new customers, since more than 95 percent of the world's consumers live outside the U.S.

What does it take to succeed as a small business in the global economy? Simply stated, your unique value proposition differentiates your products and services from the competition's products and services. It could be based on factors like technology, price or quality. Since competition is more diversified on a global scale, identifying that value proposition is even more critical and perhaps more difficult in international markets.

Once the value proposition is identified, it needs to be clearly communicated. Even with a competitive product, global success requires patience because international business is typically slow to develop. Market selection is certainly among the most critical considerations. Small businesses that go global have to define a business plan for accessing global markets, determine how much they can afford to invest in international expansion efforts, build a Website, conduct market research, find customers, and a whole host of other considerations.

Where there is opportunity, there are always challenges. Getting customers, however, is the core of the matter because without customers there is little else to consider. Getting your product in front of the right customers can be a costly challenge. The challenge is magnified when customers are thousands of miles away and speak different languages.

For a small business, a far less risky approach to selling goods or services to a distant market is to work through local partners who understand the market and often have built-in distribution channels. Doing your homework will enable you to find out where in the world your product will be in greatest demand and how much you will be able to sell over a specific period of time. Market research is a powerful tool for exploring and identifying the fastest-growing, most penetrable market for your product.

Failing to adapt the product to the international marketplace is one of the biggest mistakes of all. You must tailor your product to meet the needs of the customer. Each country has its own way of doing and/or controlling business, and the only way to deal with this is to contract with a suitable local agent or representative who will sort out these issues and look after the company's interest, as well as sell the company products.

Smaller search engines try to find a place

Steve Mansfield conceived Prefound.com a few years ago on the premise that humans, from pretty much anywhere, can collectively provide better intelligence than a computer program developed out of the Silicon Valley. Other startups, too, have had similar visions for "social search." Today, even large competitors like Yahoo and Google are pursuing the concept, hoping it'll help make search results more meaningful and thus expand the companies' market share.

Traditional search results are largely based on objective criteria such as counting the number of links other sites have placed to a given Web page. Social search gives people subjective answers - the best sushi restaurant in Chicago or the best Website for information about French impressionism - not necessarily the site visited the most. At Prefound, users contribute to the knowledge pool by submitting clusters of sites they believe would appeal to like-minded people. As an incentive, the largest contributors even get a share of Prefound's advertising money.

It's too early to know whether social search will dramatically change the way people look for information on the Internet, but it's already changing the way traditional search companies do business. Yahoo has entered the game largely by buying some of these startups, namely Del.icio.us, a system for discovering new sites based on shared bookmarks, and Flickr, a photo-sharing site where users tag items with keywords to help friends and strangers alike discover photographs on any topic. Google has started to incorporate community answers on travel and health questions into its main search engine. It has also established a program allowing users to contribute their own content, tagged with specific attributes, to turn up in search results.

While the change in direction at the Internet search leaders proves the startups were onto something, it also is forcing them to either find a specialized niche soon or get swallowed by the much larger fish. "There's room for lots and lots of players in the search race," said Chris Sherman, executive editor of Search Engine Watch. "We've got the major players out there, but as people get better at learning how to navigate the Internet, they're not going to necessarily be looking for an answer from these titans anymore. They're going to be looking for more specialized or personalized information."

Social search attempts to let the entire community of users decide. In theory, the best ideas win out in the online marketplace and are less open to manipulation. Among the larger search companies, Google recently launched Google Co-op, an information-sharing feature that marks its first major foray into social search. Shashi Seth, product manager for Google Co-op, said there will always be a role for traditional search algorithms, and he doesn't see specialization ever taking away much business from the major companies.

Mansfield acknowledges that Prefound and others like it will only get a tiny fraction of the pie in the search business, but that could be enough to turn a profit. After all, they know what they're up against.

The above was gathered from www.ecommercetimes.com.