Black Friday All Year? Secure Websites Generate More Revenue Survey Shows

This blog post examines the statistics from our festive season website security survey. Online consumers are aware about security and will spend more if reassured a website is secure.

Nowadays, many businesses understand the crucial importance of having a secure website. To keep their – and their customers' data – safe from hackers, they scan their web applications and web services for vulnerabilities, detecting and fixing them before malicious attackers find them.

Many others, unfortunately, are either doing little or nothing in terms of website security, mainly because they think that their website is not a target. Others think security vendors are merely scaremongering. So, are we scaremongering or raising awareness? Is it true that insecure websites have a direct impact on the revenue of a business?

We Surveyed Consumers About Website Security

Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the festive season, a period closely associated with food and shopping, are just a few days away. The vast majority of the respondents (84.6%) said that they do some of their shopping online.

During the holidays, how often do you purchase gifts online?

What's more, 45% of respondents revealed that over 50% of their shopping is done online. That’s a lot of online shopping!

Consumers’ Concerns When Shopping Online

In our survey, we asked respondents whether they had any concerns about the security of the online shops they buy from. Here are the results.

What, if any, is your biggest concern during the holidays when shopping online?

Respondents were concerned about their credit card details being stolen if the online store was hacked or subject to a malware attack (77.6%). Both types of incidents happen because websites are insecure. This is not a surprising statistic, especially considering the widely-reported Equifax data breach news and several other similar incidents.

Consumers’ Concerns Impact Online Retail Businesses

These concerns have a direct impact on online businesses. For example, only 33.1% of online shoppers store their payment information on the website, as shown in the graph.

When you make a purchase online, do you allow the website to save your credit card details and address?

This has a direct impact on online retail businesses, because customers are more likely to buy and make additional purchases if they do not have to enter their payment details each time.

Consumers Will Buy More When Reassured That The Online Store is Secure

Respondents said that they were more likely to visit and buy from an online store if they knew it had good security measures in place and that their information was stored securely (67%).

Businesses Should Invest in Website Security (and their Business)

The results clearly show that when businesses invest in website security, and show their customers that they care about their privacy and confidential information, they are also investing in their business. Customers will be more inclined to make a purchase and conduct most of their shopping online.

Getting Started in Web Security Is Easy

If you are new to web application security, don’t worry. Getting started is really easy. With the Netsparker web application security scanner, within just a few minutes, you can easily and automatically find web application vulnerabilities that could leave your business and online store exposed.