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Don’t Risk Holiday Season Sales: How to Protect Your E-Commerce Store From Data Disasters

By Mike Potter, Rewind

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The holiday shopping season and Black Friday/Cyber Monday
(BF/CM) have a significant impact on annual retail sales and can determine
whether retailers turn a profit for the year. With such high stakes, it is
absolutely critical for retailers to avoid any downtime on their sites. For
every second spent trying to get a broken web site back up and running,
competitors are scooping up sales.  

The Risks Of Relying On
Cloud Backups In E-Commerce

Established e-Commerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce
work hard to prevent systemwide data disasters. However, as most cloud
platforms follow the Shared Responsibility Model for data
protection, there are limitations surrounding the data they protect and backup.
While they protect the software and infrastructure powering the software,
individual retail businesses are responsible for backing up and securing their
own account-level data.

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Retailers need account-level backups to protect data sets and
content such as product listings, orders, customer lists, blog posts, gift
cards, themes and more. If account-level data or content is accidentally
deleted, platforms cannot “flip a switch” to restore anything; it may be gone
forever.

The Causes Of Data
Disasters

Data disasters at the account level can be triggered by a
number of things. A few common scenarios include:

DIY editing or modifying
of theme code
: It may seem like a good idea to try to save time and money
for retailers to take a stab at their own coding skills to make “simple” site
updates. Yet merchants often end up spending more time trying to reverse
changes that didn’t work or breaking something altogether. Having to redo tasks
or hire someone to help clean up the mess negates any potential cost savings.

Third-Party Apps Gone
Bad:
The average e-Commerce store has eight to 10 different integrations.
These tools make life easier when they are working, but every so often these
apps can wreak havoc, even the ones sitting idly in the background. Even though
platforms vet apps beforehand, they will not guarantee perfect integration with
a retailer’s store. And after an app is installed, permission to view, edit or
modify data is often granted. Unfortunately, an entire product line can be
completely lost or inventory counts changed by an app gone wrong — taking
hours, even days, to recover without proper backups in place.

Disgruntled Employees:
Employees often have substantial access to store operations. Therefore, they
can delete important files either accidentally or on purpose. It may seem far-fetched that an
employee would take such drastic actions, but it happens.

Freelancers Making
Mistakes
: Whether hiring a seasoned professional or reaching out to a
newbie on Fiverr, statistics show that some type of error is inevitable. For
instance, something as seemingly innocuous as contracting a web developer to
make backend code edits could destroy an entire site.

Multiple Stores: As
retail brands build out different product lines or expand internationally,
multiple stores are becoming the norm. Given the challenges of recovering one
site from a data disaster, imagine juggling two or three! Efficient use of time
and resources is essential during the madness of BFCM, especially if a retailer
is spending a lot of time updating themes and products across multiple stores.

Accidental Deletions:
Data loss by accidental deletion can happen in all sorts of ways. Something as
seemingly harmless as trying to delete a blog category could end up deleting
ALL blog posts in that category. We once even had a cat jump on a customer’s
keyboard and mess up their entire online store.

So How Do I Prevent It?

The picture we’ve painted may seem bleak, but there are ways
to mitigate and avoid data disasters. Here are our top four:

Strict Access and
Permission Settings
: As a retailer’s operation grows, so does the number of
employees and contractors touching the site. Create strong, unique passwords
for every user and NEVER let people share login info or passwords. For each
user, provide the minimum permissions needed to do their job. For example, if
creating an account for someone to manage orders, only give them permission to
see and edit orders. Giving people unnecessary access to a store increases risk
— whether it be malicious or just a mistake.

Evaluate and Understand
the Impact of Third-Party Apps
: A routine and thorough audit of the
integrations touching an e-Commerce site is a good idea (especially before the
holiday rush). Determine whether the risk of having an app installed is worth
the benefit. With every third-party integration, risk of data being manipulated
or edited increases.

Set a “Code-Freeze”
Date:
Basically no one, and we mean NO ONE, is allowed to install any new
apps or make any changes to the store during a predetermined set of dates. For
an event like BFCM, we often recommend starting a code-freeze 10 days before
the main event. The only exception is if something is broken and needs to be
fixed. This sounds simple, but it is a highly effective strategy to reduce the
chances of something breaking the site.

Back Up Store Data:
The most common way is to export each data set into a CSV file. This manual
download is explained in detail by various e-Commerce
platforms but has its limitations. It is time consuming and laborious to update
and cross-reference multiple spreadsheets. Every time a change is made to a
store, a new CSV file must be exported. There are now robust tools that
automate the backup process and can bring back a store in just a few clicks.

As e-Commerce sales continue to capture market share during
the holiday season, online retailers need to be on their A-game. Data
protection is now just as important as your product quality, marketing or
shipping strategies. As you create a BFCM to-do list, make sure that backing up
your account-level data is a top priority. It just might be the difference
between a Happy Holiday or a Bah Humbug.  

Mike Potter is the Co-Founder
and CEO of
Rewind, a leading cloud data backup provider.
Rewind is trusted by over 20,000 businesses to protect their data on platforms
such as BigCommerce, Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Shopify and QuickBooks. A veteran
entrepreneur, Potter has over 25 years of experience building solutions for the
software, cloud and data analytics space, including tenures at Adobe and
Mozilla. He earned his MBA from the University of Ottawa and his B.Eng in
Mechanical Engineering from McMaster University, and currently resides in
Ottawa, Canada.

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