WIREDGOV

There are many new challenges facing business across the UK, due to both the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the changes brought about by the UK's exit from the European Union. Online business is experiencing new growth levels, and websites offering free guidance to businesses, such as Business Companion, are expanding to fulfil this demand.

The past decade has seen online retail sales rise every year, with UK sales totalling £76 billion in 2019, followed by a surge due to the COVID-19 lockdown to almost £100 billion in 2020. Alongside this, over the past decade e-commerce fraud has risen by 49.6%, according to the Anti-Counterfeiting Group (ACG).

Combined with the organic growth of internet usage, the COVID-19 pandemic has further encouraged businesses to explore online solutions. With more and more small and medium enterprises entering the online space, the clamour to set up and stand out among the many new online businesses becomes a challenge for entrepreneurs and established businesses alike.

It is clear that as the public and businesses move from the high street to HTTP, consumer protection online becomes increasingly essential. Sadly, some see the situation as an opportunity to profit from others' misery and use it to defraud the public. This negative behaviour brings further challenges – while unscrupulous businesses and fraudsters lower the public's confidence in online sales, it is up to trustworthy enterprises and consumer protection authorities to build it back up.

As the online space develops, fraudsters use increasingly developed strategies to undertake their nefarious goals. These include bogus reviews, the paid-for use of social media influencers and fake news. Google reported that it blocked and removed 2.7 billion 'bad ads' globally in 2019 – 5,000 ads every minute of every day for fraud or failing to conform to regulations. It is expected that the figure for 2020, once published, will reveal an even more enormous amount of misleading adverts removed.

The stakes are high for trust in the online marketplace. Consumer trust in online sales is a vital part of accelerating the rebuilding of the UK and global economy after the pandemic. As such, it is trust that makes individual businesses stand out among others, and part of that involves you as a business owner getting the regulation right.

The big question is: how can you be sure that you're on the right track? We live in a time of immense change, especially in the UK. While the pandemic has changed the face of business, for the time being, Brexit and its effects on online business bring further questions. Among all of these questions resides increasingly complex relationships between companies and consumers as the internet grows to accommodate new business relationships.

There are also several hurdles to face if transitioning a business to online or expanding an existing online offering. Laws governing online sales do not always precisely match those for physical sales, leading to confusion at best and companies unintentionally breaking the law at worst. Thankfully, the Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI) and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) have produced a vast collection of expert online guides for businesses, which include guidance on every aspect of online sales.

Business Companion offers concise and in-depth guides for businesses for free. The website is the most thorough free resource of its kind dealing with UK consumer law, written by consumer protection experts with decades of experience. Whether your business is selling via an online platform, selling age-restricted goods online, or you're looking for information about consumer contracts at a distance, the Business Companion website has the answers for you.

Businesses conforming to the law is not just good for consumers – it supports your business's growth through bonds built with your satisfied customers, and satisfied customers are repeat customers.