Signs of a fake webshop: What does the homepage reveal?
Fake shops can look professional. Shopeye therefore looks for concrete patterns on the homepage and in the web address instead of judging the site on design alone.
The main patterns in this check are extreme discounts and domains that look like imitations of known brands.
Almost everything is 50–95 percent off
A normal sale period can of course include large discounts. It becomes more suspicious when almost every product is marked down heavily, or the site constantly highlights 80–95 percent off.
Shopeye looks for the pattern across the homepage. One cheap product is not enough.
Pay extra attention when extreme discounts appear together with:
- a brand-new domain
- unclear company details
- only bank transfer or crypto payment
- a missing return address
- known branded goods at implausibly low prices
Sikkerdigital mentions very cheap branded goods and odd web addresses as typical signs that should make you stop.
A web address that imitates a brand
Scammers can register domains that look like an official shop, for example by combining a brand name with words such as “outlet”, “shop”, or “sale” and many hyphens.
Shopeye looks for:
- brand-like domain names
- many hyphens or other unusual combinations
- punycode domains, where international characters can make the address look like another one
- web addresses that give the impression of being an official outlet shop
A domain with hyphens is not automatically fake. The combination with the other signals decides the severity.
What is punycode?
Punycode is a technical way to write domains with characters outside the ordinary Latin alphabet. It has legitimate uses, but it can also be misused to create letters that visually resemble those in a known domain.
If an address looks almost right, you should type the company’s known main address in the browser yourself instead of continuing through an ad or message link.
What the check cannot decide
An automatic analysis cannot prove that an offer is fake, or that a specific item is a copy. It can highlight patterns that often deserve extra checking.
Shopeye therefore writes “suspicious discount pattern” or “the web address may look like a brand imitation” — not that the shop is fraudulent on this basis alone.
What can you do yourself?
- Compare the price with several known retailers.
- Check the spelling of the domain character by character.
- Find the brand’s official website through an independent search.
- Check the domain’s age.
- Check the company and CVR number.
- Avoid a rushed purchase, even if a countdown says the offer is about to expire.
In short
Extreme discounts and imitating domain names are warning signals, especially when they appear together. They are not proof on their own, but they are a good reason to look closer at the shop.
Read all the signals Shopeye checks.