The festive months often mean Christmas parties, mulled wine and present-shopping online. However, it also means a significant rise in scam content on online marketplaces.

The quest for the perfect gift can bring new shoppers, and increased sales, to your website. Ensuring that these new (and regular) users have a safe, positive experience is therefore, hugely important.

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The levels of sophistication and number of fraudulent ads are increasing all of the time, but there are measures that can be put in place to help protect your site and users. Here are three essential tips to help you prepare and keep your users safe during the Holiday season.

1. Know your seasonal content

High-profile product releases, global events and the change in seasons all impacts what people search for throughout the year.

Gifts of the year, must-have electronics and winter sports equipment are all popular at Christmas time. These in demand products run the greatest risk of being used as bait by scammers. It gives them a faster turnaround on potential victims before they are removed from the site.

While scam ads may be inevitable during the holiday period, the good news is that if you know where to look, it is quite easy to spot and remove. This leads us to the second tip.

2. Target your efforts strategically

Not only a rise in scams, but a greater volume in general, is a further issue in this period.

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You have probably planned for this spike in volumes, either by hiring more moderators or by turning your percentage of automated moderation up. To make either approaches effective, make sure to focus efforts strategically.

If you don’t have the resources to moderate all volumes, focus on high risk categories. During the holiday season that is usually electronic, toys, pets and rentals. Automation will also allow you to keep a certain level of moderation across your site while your moderation team deals with more complex, grey area cases.

Categories with a high percentage of scam ads require greater attention. Experienced staff may be more able to deal with high risk categories. If you are hiring new or temporary employees to cover spikes make sure they have clear instructions on what to identify.

3. Train your staff and update your automation rules

Lastly, the best way to safeguard users is by preventing more fraudulent ads going live on your site.

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To achieve this your moderation team and your automation rules should be equipped with transparent guides on what to look for. This requires research, training and updated automation rules. Discovering the season’s hot products depends on the target market of your site. One tip is to look at Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales on the big e-commerce sites serving your market.

Through a better understanding of the popular products it is easier to update moderators and automation rules accordingly. Continuous monitoring of training and guidelines can help keep scam attempts in check this season.

With a targeted effort and key knowledge, you can bring users safely through another year of gift shopping, and hopefully convert a few new ones on the way.

Sourced by Patrik Frisk is CEO at Besedo