An SSL certificate authenticates your business’s details and enables a secure connection between your website and your customers. Essentially, these certificates encrypt and protect the exchange of data between the server where your website is hosted and your customer’s browser.
You might have already noticed that websites without an SSL certificate now show a ‘not secure’ note in front of the URL? That’s because Google now requires all websites to have these certificates; without them, your website rankings are not only in danger of dropping, but your customer’s may also become concerned about their online safety.
Benefits of installing an SSL certificate on your website
For no other reason than to give online shoppers confidence in the security of your website, it’s time to install one of these certificates on your website, if you haven’t done so already. Once you have installed an SSL certificate on your website, you will see that the ‘http’ at the front of your website’s URL has changed to ‘https’, indicating to online shoppers that your site is now secure.
Online shoppers are far more inclined to purchase from sites with a secure connection, so if you still haven’t taken this step yet, you may find that your sales drop as customer interactions drop. Google is also starting to rank secure sites over unsecured sites, resulting in lower organic search rankings for unsecured sites, which will also impact customer sales.
These certificates not only make it safer for customers to buy from your website, but they also encrypt personal data, such as login details, addresses, phone numbers, etc. As you can appreciate, privacy has become a big issue recently with online shoppers becoming very aware that their personal data can be insecure online, unless it is encrypted and protected. Identity theft and credit card fraud are real issues, which cause many online shoppers to severely limit their purchases to unsecure sites.
What about free SSL certificates?
Free SSL certificates re not very reliable and can just be temporary measures that are not accepted by browsers as being legitimate. Your best option is to talk to us at GO Creative and we help you to select the best certificate for your website.
