SPF for Your Website: Three Simple Steps to Protect Your Online Presence

As the days get longer and the mercury rises, we’re reminded yet again of the importance of remaining vigilant when it comes to applying sunscreen to protect ourselves from summer’s damaging rays. It’s a simple yet necessary precaution that if neglected has both short-term consequences – the painful agony of sunburn – and long-term ramifications – skin damage and increased risk of skin cancer. The same holds true for our websites. If we are not proactive in taking the necessary precautions to keep our online presence safe, problems will inevitably arise. Here are three simple measures you can take to apply SPF to your website that will safeguard the integrity not only of your brand’s online presence but its reputation as well:

(S)ecure your site against SQL injections.

Websites that feature data-driven applications can be vulnerable to attacks known as SQL injections, whereby malicious code is added to an entry field, then run and executed. These attacks exploit security vulnerabilities in problematic code, attacking your site’s database and performing any number of actions, from adding unapproved content to your public-facing site to allowing the hacker to download your entire database. This is a prime example of why rigorous testing is absolutely critical prior to launch. If your site is already up and running, consult with your web team to make sure that it has undergone thorough testing and is protected against such hacks. If you want to take additional precautionary measures, there are also security companies that specialize in detecting these types of website and database vulnerabilities, and they can provide you with a security audit.

(P)rotect your domain name.

It’s common sense that you must pay to acquire the domain name where your business will reside online. However, it’s important to remember that you have to continue to pay in order to retain the rights to use that domain name. Essentially, when you purchase your domain name, you’re not buying it outright. Rather, you’re renting that name for a specified period of time. Most registrars (Network Solutions, GoDaddy, Register.com, etc.) allow you to secure a name for anywhere from 12 months to 99 years. If you allow your registration to lapse, however, the domain name becomes available for purchase again and is open to the public for anyone to acquire. Bear in mind that there are actually companies that profit handsomely from business owners who neglect their domain registrations. They monitor domains that are nearing expiration, taking ownership of them the moment they become available. If you have the misfortune of having your domain acquired by one of these companies, usually you can negotiate having ownership transferred back to you, but it will cost you dearly. Unfortunately, while this is a shady practice, it is not illegal. If you allow your domain name to expire, it is fair game for anyone to register it – including these types of companies. Before your domain name expires, your registrar will likely send you many notices prompting you to renew. I start getting domain name renewal notices six months or more before the scheduled expiration date, and as that date gets closer, the notices start coming more and more frequently. Still, despite this barrage of email notifications, there are still many companies that are unaware that their expiration date is approaching, and they either lose their domain name altogether or are forced to pay a king’s ransom to get it back. Often when this situation occurs, it is because the person who initially completed the registration process for the domain name is no longer with the company, and therefore the email address they used to register the name is no longer valid, so the multitude of email notices go unreceived. The company innocently thinks they are protected until one day they stop receiving emails (yes, your email is tied into your domain name), or a customer mentions that they tried to go to the site, and it was simply gone. Even though there is a grace period after a domain has lapsed that allows you to reclaim your ownership before it becomes open to the public, the lapse isn’t always discovered in time to take advantage of this safety net. To prevent this, it is critically important to keep the contact information for your domain registration up to date. Either contact your registrar directly or speak with your web team to make sure you know when each of the domain names you own needs to be renewed, and double-check to ensure that the contact information for your account is valid.

(F)ortify your forms.

Web forms are a staple of doing business online. In fact, rare is the site that doesn’t include a form of some sort that allows the user to input information to be transmitted to the site’s owner, whether its purpose is to make a contact inquiry, sign up for a mailing list, complete a purchase, apply for employment, etc. As anyone who has a form on their site can attest, however, not all submissions received via these forms are legitimate. This is called robot spam, which is created by spammers who write programs that send out spambots to indiscriminately fill out any and all different types of forms on the Web, looking for entryways to expose a site’s security vulnerabilities (see SQL injections above). If you find your inbox filling up with indecipherable junk submissions, it’s these bots who are to blame. To combat these spambots, you can install a CAPTCHA system on your form, which generates an image with a random combination of numbers and letters that the user must enter in order to submit the form. The spambots can't interpret these CAPTCHA images, so therefore they can’t complete the process of sending the form. While there is legitimate debate as to whether or not CAPTCHA is the most effective way to prevent bogus submissions, it still remains the most popular solution for web form security. However, the reason it’s important to block these bots goes beyond eliminating the annoyance of a cluttered inbox. A few months ago, my company decided to remove the CAPTCHA requirement from our contact form. We knew we would get a flood of spam submissions, but we decided we could deal with a little extra hassle on our end in exchange for reducing the inconvenience to legitimate users of having to interpret those squiggly letters in order to simply get in touch with us. As expected, the amount of spam we received increased dramatically, but it was still manageable. Then, all of a sudden, we stopped receiving any submissions at all. We also began seeing some of our emails to other people bounce back. What we discovered was that our web domain (which is where our emails originate from) had been blacklisted as spam by Microsoft (which is what powers our email platform). Apparently, all the bogus submissions from our website (which resides on our domain) to our email caused Microsoft to identify us as spammers. This is because our form submissions came from an email address associated with our own domain name (many web forms are configured this way). Obviously, we were not the ones generating the spam, but this strange series of coincidences conspired to get us blacklisted! Fortunately, it was an easy process to get our domain removed from the blacklist, and we quickly re-installed the CAPTCHA system on our contact form, but we certainly learned an important lesson about security and spambots along the way. If you allow those bogus entries to make it through, there is a risk that you, too, could find yourself blacklisted and unable to send email to some of your most important contacts.

Seize the day and stay safe.

Since summer is vacation season for many of us, business tends to slow down slightly as our clients and colleagues enjoy much-deserved time off. That makes this the perfect time to seize the opportunity to apply these S-P-F practices today to ensure that your online presence is well protected all year long.

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Is Your Brand Ready to #OptOutside? How to Follow REI’s Bold Leap into Customer-Centric Marketing

For many retailers, the day known as Black Friday has become one of the most important dates on their calendar. Last year, shoppers in the US spent just over $9 billion on the day after Thanksgiving, counting for a sizable percentage of many stores’ holiday sales. This is why it was so surprising when outdoor equipment retailer, REI, announced that they would be closing all 143 of their stores this Black Friday and encouraging their employees and customers to #OptOutside instead. It remains to be seen if this bold move on the part of REI will make a dent in the company’s sales over the entire holiday period or if they will make up the difference elsewhere. What we do already know is that the early reactions to this decision have been extremely positive and there are some valuable lessons to be learned from this campaign from REI.

Customer-centric marketing is still marketing.

Make no mistake about it, this decision by REI is marketing. They have an entire section of their website dedicated to this #OptOutside idea and they are encouraging others to join them and to “tell the world.” A company does not take these steps for a simple announcement of a change in store hours. You go to these lengths for a marketing campaign. The fact that this is a marketing campaign should in no way take away from what REI is doing with this idea. They are voluntarily skipping out on one of the biggest shopping days of the year in order to do something that will benefit their people. Not only are they losing out on the sales from that day, but they are paying their employees to head outside! So this day is costing the company in a number of ways. Yes, this is marketing, but that does not also mean it is not an amazing and honest decision by this company. Marketing does not need to be a shady or deceptive thing, it simply needs to shine a light on your company. If you can do that while also doing something positive, that is a win-win situation.

Stay true to your ideals.

The main reason why this campaign from REI is so perfect is because it is absolutely in line with the company’s overall ideals. This idea makes sense coming from REI in a way that it would not if it was being done by Wal-Mart. That is not a knock on Wal-Mart, it is just the simple truth that this kind of a campaign would not be on brand for that retailer, while it is for REI. When planning your own campaigns, remember to remain true to your company’s ideals and mission. No one likes marketing that feels disingenuous, so by being true to who you are, your efforts have a much better chance of being well received.

Make the hard decisions.

On-brand or not, this decision could not have been an easy one for REI to make. There is no way to deny the fact that they will lose sales by closing the store on Black Friday. Still, they made the hard choice to follow through with this initiative anyway. That is an important lesson. Doing something new and unexpected is rarely easy. Sometimes it can be really, really hard. If you have thought through your plan and decided that it is the right direction for your company, you will need to make that hard decision and press forward. Depending on the structure of your company, making hard choices may require buy in from multiple people. Have these discussions and evaluate all the angles, but in the end, do not allow a hard decision to prevent you from making the right decision.

Do the opposite of your competition.

REI’s decision to shut their doors on Black Friday is so surprising because it is the exact opposite of what other stores are doing. Other companies are expanding their hours of operation, with many of them opening on Thanksgiving to get a jump on the shopping frenzy. A company that stands up and decides to take the exact opposite approach of what everyone else is doing gets noticed. When planning your own marketing or promotional ideas, look to what your competitors are doing and think about how you could turn the entire situation on its head. Dare to be wildly different and take the opportunity to show the world how you are different from your competition and why that should matter to them. Taking a unique approach can be incredibly powerful, especially in the world of the Web where everyone seems to be playing a game of “monkey see, monkey do” and just rehashing the same old campaigns and approaches over and over. If you want to break that mold, you can start by moving in the opposite direction of everyone else.

Tell the world.

The best marketing idea in the world will fail if you do not share that idea with the world. You need to promote your campaign so it reaches your customers and potential customers. In the case of REI, they didn’t just put a small sign on the doors of their stores to let customers know about their Black Friday plans. They shot videos, made a website, and created a whole campaign around their #OptOutside hash tag. When planning your marketing campaigns, be sure that you couple a great idea with a strategy to communicate it effectively. REI has done this perfectly and the incredibly positive reception they have received from people fed up with the ridiculousness of Black Friday has helped propel this campaign even further. All the while, people are talking about REI in a powerful and positive light. Yes the company may lose some sales on Black Friday, but what they are gaining in terms of public perception and promotion is priceless!

Have a plan.

In addition to communicating what you are doing with the world, you should also have a plan to capitalize on the results. REI is not stupid, they know that the business will still come and I fully expect them to run sales the rest of that Black Friday weekend. People who appreciate what the company has done for their employees and customers may make it a point to shop with them that weekend as a show of support. In the end, the company may even make up those lost Black Friday sales that weekend or over the course of the holidays. This has to be part of their ultimate plan – to do something positive and different while also positioning it in such a way that they will be able to recover anything that may have been lost. It’s a great plan for all involved.

In summary

REI took a bold stand in their efforts to break away from what every other retailer is doing with their Black Friday promotions. Instead of fighting for attention on that crazy shopping day, they have decided to take a different route. Because they stayed true to their ideals, made some tough decisions, and were unafraid to shake things up and be different, they are the store that people are talking about leading up to Black Friday, which is interesting since they are the only ones who will be closed that day.

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