There are some months when it feels like things are moving so fast that your company needs a motorcycle to keep up. If that’s how it has felt recently with the questions over shifting policies around tariffs, international shipping, and global commerce in relation to the U.S., you’re not alone.
Of course, you need to keep track. At the same time, a laser focus on a specific issue like tariffs can be dangerous. It obscures the reality, which is that digital commerce businesses need to take responsibility and control to ensure they relate to customers in a tailored, dynamic, and frictionless fashion.
The good news is that possible tariffs — and any other challenges and changes — are all part of the same picture. And, at least in part, they all benefit from the same solution.
New Consumer Reality Means New Consumer Behavior
When things change, people adapt. Digital commerce is no stranger to handling the consequences.
In recent years, privacy legislation (like GDPR and CCPA), payment regulations (like PSD2, PSD3, the EU’s Instant Payment Regulation, and Japan’s 3DS EMV mandate), and other policy-related changes from large companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, and more, have all required companies to adjust to meet shifting legal, regulatory, and consumer expectations and requirements.
Similarly, the COVID-19 pandemic led to dramatic shifts in consumer behavior. Suddenly, legitimate shoppers were engaging in patterns that might have signaled fraud. And with that volatility, some businesses overcorrected in an attempt to mitigate risk, inadvertently creating friction for good customers.
Whatever happens with tariffs or global shipping, businesses need to incorporate agility and a focus on customer experience into their business structure and operations. You can’t control external factors, but you can control your company’s reactions.
It’s important to view this from the twin perspectives of protecting the business and excelling in customer experience. In the process, you can ensure that your customers have a great experience and that your business is set for success, no matter what happens.
Will U.S. Shoppers Start Looking Like the Rest of the World?
Shoppers outside the U.S. often use workarounds to try to get the products, deals, or services that U.S. customers receive. For example:
- They might use proxies or VPNs to look like they have an IP address in the U.S.
- They might use U.S. credit cards, even though they’re based elsewhere
- They might use reshippers to send the goods outside the country
It’s possible that U.S. consumers could respond to new restrictions or price increases by adopting similar workarounds – only in reverse. For instance, they might use a reshipper — perhaps in combination with mild location obfuscation techniques — to purchase goods abroad from a country with lower tariffs and get them freight-forwarded to the U.S.
This requires a slight shift in mindset for digital retailers. While these behaviors may resemble tactics used for fraud, merchants should be cautious not to overreact and assume intent without context — and a knee-jerk response could result in false declines or unnecessary friction for legitimate customers. However, the tools and processes needed are already familiar to most merchants. The difference is that you might need to start leveraging them for U.S. consumers more often.
Preparing for the Possible
Beyond individual customers, retailers may also see shifts in how resellers operate in relation to their brand. Because resellers work within tight margins and specialize in specific industries, any changes to pricing, supply chains, or import costs can force them to adapt quickly.
For example, suppose tariffs drive up the cost of certain electronics or apparel. In that case, resellers may seek alternative suppliers in lower-tariff countries or pivot to new product categories with better margins. Some may explore unconventional sourcing methods to bypass cost increases, while others might identify emerging resale opportunities — offering products at a lower price, with greater variety, or faster delivery than domestic suppliers can provide.
If your business doesn’t have a policy on resellers yet, then it’s past time to get serious about this fact of retail. Companies should be prepared for these shifts, ensuring they can accurately pinpoint a customer’s identity and differentiate between legitimate reseller activity and potential abuse while maintaining a seamless customer experience.
In the same way, higher prices may drive some consumers to look for ways to cheat the system, abuse loyalty programs, or attempt refund fraud. None of these are new problems; they’re all issues your business needs to understand and protect against on a daily basis.
Think of the current uncertainty as a good opportunity to make sure your policies and mitigation strategies are current and effective. That helps future-proof and strengthen your business against growing challenges, no matter what happens.
Stand Out By Streamlining the Shopping Experience
The less friction and frustration, the greater the chance of conversion and brand loyalty. If there are possible changes on the horizon that might have a detrimental effect on the customer journey, whether that’s via price, shipping time, or identity verification, there’s one answer that seems obvious to me: Find ways to make everything over which you do have control as frictionless as possible.
Once again, this is an excellent opportunity to put some energy and focus into something we should all be doing anyway — but it often gets overlooked. If shopping with competitors is becoming more complicated or less seamless, it’s a great time for you to stand out with a friction-free experience.
It’s all about identity. The customers coming to your site have a rich online history and presence, and you can draw on that to ensure that you provide an experience tailored to them. For example, if your fraud or payments system recognizes them from previous purchases — even if those are elsewhere on the internet — you can make sure that they are trusted right away, have no hoops to jump through, and are recognized and still signed in when they return to your store.
Equally, if you know that this shopper has a history of abuse, you can protect your business by preventing them from taking advantage of returns policies, setting up extra accounts, or using multiple coupons in a way that violates the terms of service. Of course, if they’re fraudsters, you can block them outright.
Deep, instant, accurate identity intelligence on your users is at the heart of safe, successful, and streamlined online shopping for you and your customers. It’s also the best way to gain control in a fast-moving world of commerce, regulations, and expectations, no matter what the future holds.
Doriel Abrahams is the Principal Technologist at Forter and host of ‘What the Fraud?,’ where he monitors emerging trends in the fight against fraudsters, including new fraud rings, attacker MOs, rising technologies, etc. His mission is to provide digital commerce leaders with the latest risk intel so they can adapt and get ahead of what’s to come.
