How to Choose Age Verification Software for Your Website

For ecommerce companies that sell age-restricted goods, getting products and services into adult hands can be challenging. The internet has made online gambling, cannabis, tobacco, online dating, sports betting, weapons and more adult-oriented commerce accessible. However, these companies have a moral and legal responsibility to make sure products intended for adults are not accessible to minors.

Unfortunately, teens and kids typically aren’t deterred by pop-up messages requiring them to check a box to confirm that they’re over 18. On the contrary, this additional step often makes it more thrilling for rule-breaking teens and kids to seek out adult-only products and services online. That’s where age verification software for your website comes into play.

Why It’s Important

Basic age checks like the pop-up box mentioned above are not enough to protect minors from age-sensitive products. For this reason, age verification software can be advantageous for many companies that sell goods online.

Age verification software accurately confirms a user’s age to restrict access to products or services that are not suitable for them. This type of software works to quickly verify a user’s age by referencing reliable public sources of information.

Suppose you operate a company that sells age-restricted goods or services online. In that case, you’ll need age verification software to avoid hefty fines and legal issues that may result from underage customers accessing your goods. Implementing effective software on your website can also help you filter out users who aren’t real customers while offering a frictionless verification process.

Types of Age Verification

Now that you know what age verification software is, how it works and its benefits, let’s take a look at the different ways to verify a website user’s age using this type of software.

Electronic (data source) identity verification: With electronic identity verification, ecommerce companies can verify a customer’s age by cross-referencing reliable public data sources to ensure legitimacy. These types of verification tools can also be paired with two-factor authentication using email or phone number verification.

Document verification: Document verification compares a customer’s picture with their photo ID. Ecommerce companies that sell age-restricted products can also require sellers to provide credit card information. However, a minor could easily bypass this by using a parent’s card.

Face-based biometric verification: Face-based biometric verification measures a customer’s face and head to verify a person’s identity based on the biometric patterns and data it collects.

While there are pros and cons to each of these types of verification tools, generally electronic identity verification works well for most industries and is less burdensome for the customer. However, you will need to decide for yourself what works best for your use case.

What to Look for in Age Verification Software

Shopping for age verification software is not as easy as it sounds, because not all verification software is created equally.

If you’re searching for an age verification solution for your website, you should consider the following factors when selecting one:

Age verification software should be effective. Perhaps most importantly, whatever software you choose should be good at what it claims to do, which is verifying the actual age of an online customer. If it does not provide accurate and precise results each time, it’s not worth the time and money required to invest in it.

It should be user friendly. If age verification software is slow, clunky or hard to use, it will kill your conversion rate. The best options are easy for customers to navigate and provide a quick and accurate verification process. An age verification tool should not hurt the user experience in any way.

It should adhere to federal and state regulations. Any verification software you use should adhere to the most up-to-date legislation to protect your business from legal trouble or fines.

It should be easy to integrate into your website. The best age verification software will also be easy to incorporate into your website and tailor to fit your brand and style. Additionally, integration should only take a few minutes, not weeks.

While many verification software programs claim to provide these factors listed above, that’s not always true. You will need to do your own independent research to ensure that you’re using high-quality software that meets all legal requirements. You can also reference customer reviews to discover potential downfalls or benefits associated with specific verification software.

If you’re unsure of what your company needs, feel free to contact a Cognito expert. We can help guide you through the process of choosing your verification software, show you the benefits of using ours and provide a free demo of our product so you can make sure you’re happy with it before you commit.

Try Cognito for Free Today

Online businesses should strongly consider adding accurate age verification software to their websites if they haven’t already. Reducing the risk of underage access to adult-oriented products and services will help companies avoid legal problems and large fines while protecting their reputation as responsible organizations.

With Cognito’s age verification software, you can quickly identify legitimate customers and calculate age by date of birth. Our software empowers you to limit access to adult-oriented products and services to protect your business from fraud. Most importantly, our reliable digital age verification tool won’t force you to compromise any user-friendly aspects of your website.

Age verification doesn’t have to be burdensome for the customer. With Cognito Flow, you can add reliable international age verification to your website with just 20 lines of code. You customize the type of information you'd like to collect -- just a picture of their government ID, for example, or just verification with a government ID number. So you can stay compliant without introducing additional friction in your buying experience.

Contact our sales team to get a demo and see how Cognito's age verification solution can help your business.