Security & Android apps: why automated testing matters

Closing the mobile conversion gap with PWAs

According to Mobify’s 2018 Q4 Mobile Commerce Insights Report, mobile overall, showed continued growth with purchases made between Black Friday and Christmas. Somewhat surprising from Mobify’s findings was that the most frequent traffic source for mobile was email. According to Forbes, “retailers sent 3.5 billion emails on Black Friday, and another 4.1 billion on Cyber Monday – significant increases over the 3 billion and 3.3 billion, respectively, sent in 2017.” 

Closing the gap

Although mobile is edging out other devices in terms of traffic and use, it is still possessing a challenge for retailers in terms of lower conversion rates when compared to desktop. As Mobify reports, before an ecommerce retailer can fully close the conversion rate gap, businesses need to investigate this compound metric further by looking at traffic AND transactions.

Even though transactions are increasing, if they are not increasing as quickly as traffic, the conversion rate goes down. [Transactions / Traffic = Conversion] This can be a bit misleading in terms of mobile commerce success. For this reason, Mobify notes that “the conversion rate on its own is not a good metric to evaluate your overall performance. Because it’s a compound metric, interpreting conversion rate requires taking the extra step of understanding the movement of the variables (traffic and transactions) that comprise it.”

A step towards fully closing this gap means looking at the customer-facing experience offered and the potential to improve. With the adoption of Progressive Web Apps (PWA), retailers can offer better, if not the best way to deliver improved, faster customer experiences. PWAs load similar to a regular web page, but offer additional native device functionality such as working offline, serving notifications, launching a camera, etc. The number one benefit of PWAs vs. non-PWA sites (like on desktop), is speed – as they significantly reduce the time it takes for a consumer to complete crucial tasks such as finding an item or completing the path to purchase. The faster a shopper is able to complete a purchase, the more likely they are to buy. Google research found that as page load time increases from one second to ten, the probability of bouncing increases 123%. PWAs offer an expedited experience over native apps, while offering all the same features. 

Debenhams, a British department store ventured into the world of PWAs and saw double-digit percentage point growth in mobile conversions. And, their “commuter browsing” turned into “commuter shopping.” 

Mobify notes the three approaches to delivering commerce PWAs: commerce-led, experience-led and API-led. However, when looking to implement a customer-first strategy, an API-led approach is really the way to go. 

The API-driven approach to PWAs 

To define the API-driven approach to delivering commerce PWAs, these are in fact when ecommerce features/services are exposed through APIs and consumed through a front-end which has the ability to invoke those APIs to retrieve and interact with whatever data is required for the ecommerce flows exposed by that API. 

There are many benefits to implementing this methodology. Control of the ecommerce back-end through an API creates a number of services that are no longer limited by the front-end consuming them. The same API which drives a front-end touchpoint for a PWA storefront can be used for additional touchpoints such as IoT touchpoints, POS machines and customer interactive chatbots. This additionally becomes a great benefit to the PWA storefront as this PWA may live independently of the ecommerce back-end services and be built around consuming these back-end services without any concerns of impacting behavior as additional APIs are exposed. It becomes the sole decision of the front-end PWA implementation to consume additional services which have been exposed by the API in the future case, and thus simplifies adoption of those services. 

Best practices to accomplishing this may vary by organization and business case. Some general cases include usages of REST or Graph QL APIs to expose ecommerce business logic in a meaningful representation, while some continue to make use of legacy technologies such as SOAP.

The post Closing the mobile conversion gap with PWAs appeared first on Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog.

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https://www.getelastic.com/closing-the-mobile-conversion-gap-with-progressive-web-apps

Is Artificial Intelligence (AI) enough for ecommerce fraud management?

Fighting fraud isn’t easy. It’s time-consuming, it’s challenging, and it’s expensive. Taking an artificial intelligence (AI) approach seems like a better strategy.

After all, AI can quickly analyze extensive amounts of customer data to identify emerging fraud patterns. By incorporating this insight into fraud risk scoring algorithms in near real-time, businesses can lower their risk of falling victim to fraud.

AI Advantages 

Where AI excels is its ability to quickly review incoming transactions. The algorithms can calculate fraud risk scores far faster than manual reviewers ever could, which means for businesses that must deal with a high volume of incoming orders, AI can be the difference between speedy approvals and disgruntled customers.

There’s a cost aspect to this as well. Because this initial review of incoming orders can be automated, businesses don’t need to spend valuable (read: expensive) man-hours reviewing each individual order. This can tremendously cut down operating costs, and it enables organizations to focus their analysts’ attention only on those specific orders that require further investigation.

And finally, AI can be very helpful at spotting obscure patterns in fraud that might not be readily apparent to the average reviewer. This is particularly true if businesses have a good amount of high-quality, validated information on past orders.

However, for all the benefits AI-based fraud solutions can offer, the technology does have some limitations when it comes to evaluating credit card transactions.

AI-Based Shortcomings 

That said, there are several circumstances where AI alone will not be sufficient to manage ecommerce fraud and may even prevent businesses from maximizing sales.

1. Auto-Declining Orders

AI does a great job of auto-approving good orders and flagging potentially fraudulent orders. But AI should never be trusted on its own to auto-decline orders. Statistics show false declines – that is, accidentally declining orders that are actually legitimate – is a very high, very real risk for ecommerce merchants.

By all means, AI should be used to flag orders that might be fraudulent; but they always need an additional review before declining them. False declines cost businesses 13 times more than credit card fraud. Organziaitons need to validate every decline decision, to be confident they’re not inadvertently ruining a relationship with a perfectly good customer simply because they’re trying to ship a gift to a different address (which is a common reason for false declines).

2. Lack of High-Quality Data

AI is only as good as the data it receives. If product is brand new or highly unique, AI-based fraud solution may not have the data it needs to make accurate approval decisions. In these cases, an AI solution may end up declining orders that are good – and the AI algorithm may inadvertently become more conservative as time goes one and decline more and more future orders.

For these types of products, flexibility will be key to ensuring merchants are maximizing sales without also increasing chargebacks. This may require turning off (or loosening the standards) for the AI solution while they closely monitor actual sales and fraud trends. Businesses should study their potential risk, and modify their fraud strategy based on their learnings.

3. Troubles with Fraud Filters

At the core of many AI solutions lies the ubiquitous fraud filter. Fraud filters use rules to evaluate incoming transactions; if a transaction meets certain criteria, the transaction will be either flagged for review or auto-declined.

The problem, therefore, is whether the fraud filters are set up properly. It’s tempting to think that if one fraud filter catches some fraud, more fraud filters will catch even more fraud. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. Layering filters incorrectly can result in some rules canceling others out, leaving you as vulnerable as if you had no fraud protection.

Moreover, smart fraudsters know how to “play” the fraud filter game. For example, it’s not terribly difficult for a fraudster to test a system with a series of orders and eventually learn that orders under $1,000 are typically approved, whereas orders over $1,000 are typically reviewed. Once they learn this, they’ll flood the system with batches of orders of $999 that enable them to fly under the fraud filters’ radar, completely undetected.

A Winning Approach = AI + Human

Perhaps the smartest approach is to combine the best of both worlds: Businesses should implement a comprehensive fraud management solution that combines AI technology with expert fraud analysis.

This multilayered approach enables organziations to harness all the efficiency benefits of AI, so they don’t have to slow down the order approval process – and it also safeguards businesses against the risk of accidentally auto-declining orders from their best customers. In this type of approach, AI might be used to auto-approve good orders and flag orders that are suspicious, while a human analyst that understands the nuances of fraud can manually review and either validate the order or confirm the decline decision.

The post Is Artificial Intelligence (AI) enough for ecommerce fraud management? appeared first on Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog.

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https://www.getelastic.com/is-artificial-intelligence-ai-enough-for-ecommerce-fraud-management

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Digital commerce in the 5G world

5G is the next generation of mobile networks that will drastically increase performance and enable new use-cases across three dimensions:

• Massive machine-to-machine (M2M) communications will accelerate the adoption of M2M/IoT leading to emergence of many new use-cases including remote control, infrastructure monitoring, health, connected cars and many others.
• Ultra-reliable low latency communications will allow to achieve latencies as low as 1ms which enable delivery of new services such as near-real time data processing, remote control and augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR).
• Enhanced mobile broadband will enable 10x to 100x faster networks comparing to 4G allowing fixed-like services to be delivered to business and consumers through mobile connections.

Although still in its infancy, 5G is growing rapidly with the number of 5G connections expected to reach almost 1.5 billion by 2024. New use-cases and capabilities enabled by 5G will accelerate enterprise digital transformation across verticals, such as:

• NEW TOUCHPOINTS. In the world where people, devices, equipment and cars are connected wirelessly at any time, increasing the number of interactions will happen through emerging touchpoints. Consumers and enterprises will interact with businesses to experience and order new products in near-real time with AR/VR, chat bots and a multitude of connected devices. For example, new pay-per-view content can be ordered directly from a connected car through an entertainment system. Enterprises will be able to order new stock based on data from sensors in the equipment and applications connected to the network.
• NEW PRODUCTS and SERVICES. Increased speeds, low latency and the adoption of M2M/IoT use-cases will enable new B2C and B2B business models based around on-demand services delivered anywhere in the world at any time. Manufacturers will be able to sell hardware products in on-demand fashion with new value-added services. Financial services will be equipped to charge customers depending on their level of activity, including usage-based car and equipment insurance. Telecom service providers will be able to allow subscribers to granularly configure their service based on various parameters including speed, bandwidth and quality of service.
• NEW EXPERIENCES. Enormous amount of data generated in the connected world will provide enterprises with valuable information on how their B2C and B2B customers use their products and services. This will allow enterprises to build an understanding of customer usage patterns, locations and profiles to design personalized offerings. Combined with the on-demand business models it will enable real-time hyper-personalization of products and services. 

Commerce Requirements

In order to drive the sustainable business growth in the 5G world, enterprises will need to employ a commerce solution that enables the delivery of new hyper-personalized offerings across traditional and new touchpoints:

• Diverse new business models will require commerce solutions to have comprehensive product management capabilities. It will need to support products and services with different payment methods including one-time, flat-rate, subscription-based, usage-based. On top of that it will need to support partner-enabled offerings as enterprises will extensively bundle their own and third-party offerings.
• Emerging touchpoints will require service providers to have comprehensive APIs on top of their commerce platform. The APIs will provide quotation and ordering through any channel, be it a vending machine or a connected car. Many of the touchpoints in the 5G ecosystem will be owned by third parties, which means that the APIs have to be well-documented, so that the third parties’ developers will be able to develop applications on top of them.
• To deliver hyper-personalized experiences commerce platform will need to provide comprehensive capabilities for promotion management and offering personalization. It will have to leverage data from diverse sources including billing, interactions, account profile to deliver personalized offerings with custom prices in real-time. Promotions will have to be defined both for large customer segments, as well as, microsegments and individual customers.

The post Digital commerce in the 5G world appeared first on Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog.

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https://www.getelastic.com/digital-commerce-in-the-5g-world