July 10, 2009
By the ZippyCart Shopping Carts Content Team
The United States has always been the leader in eCommerce stores and adoption of online shopping. Canada and the United Kingdom have also done a great job of harnessing eCommerce. However Australia has been having difficulties making progress in this area because they have much different liability laws. It is one of the key reasons why many brick and mortar retailers operate a Web site as an information source as opposed to an eCommerce storefront. This is a huge contrast from the US where there are hundreds of thousands of online stores.
In Australia the majority of the time it is the merchants’ rather than the consumers’ bank or credit-card provider that has to absorb the cost of fraud and this extends to the online shopping space. For example if a few pairs of earrings are purchased from an online jewelry retailer using a stolen credit card, it is not the credit card company or the bank who pay back the merchant it is most often the merchant who takes a hit to their bottom line. Luckily the Australian Retailers Association is fighting to help take some of the burden off of the merchants so that they can be more competitive in an online global marketplace.
Regardless of the rules in the US, you still want to make sure you have a secure shopping cart experience. Customers need to feel safe and you want to have successful legitimate sales. Taking this security precaution by picking the right eCommerce shopping cart will save you headaches and allow you to provide the type of online storefront that people will safely enjoy.
Amy is the co-founder of ZippyCart. She went to school for film in Cleveland, Ohio and ended up working in the field of viral video marketing, which eventually led her to her real profession: SEO. When she's not writing for ZippyCart, she can be found out and about Seattle, WA.
