In an industry that increasingly gets more competitive every day, a seller’s reputation matters a lot. As personal selling is not possible online, e-commerce sites rely on several factors to establish consumer trust. Among them are reviews, which compensate for the lack of face-to-face transactions. In fact, 90% of consumers stated that positive reviews influence their purchasing decisions. Consistency in terms of the quality of one’s product and services also plays a crucial role in fostering trust.

But because digital commerce is cut-throat, online merchants sometimes resort to whatever it takes to maintain their share of the profits—even if they tarnish someone else’s reputation in the process. For instance, some sell replicas and pass them off as authentic items. They may also impersonate legitimate businesses on your site or manipulate product search results with blackhat marketing techniques. Finally, with the right exploit tools, some even manage to hijack someone else’s brand, starting with products and the target’s account.

This tutorial instructs users on performing vendor website assessments with enterprise-grade domain and IP intelligence solutions to prevent rogue sellers from abusing e-commerce platforms. But before we go on, let’s first deconstruct the reasons behind website audits.