An SSL (or a Secure Socket Layer) Certificate is a way to protect the information that a site is sending and receiving. If your site has a form, a login facility, a file upload, or an ecommerce platform, it’s transmitting data that contains personal information to other servers. Whilst the data is moving from your site to the destination server, it is at risk. The SSL ensures that during the journey between the two points, there’s no chance of anybody else accessing that data.
You can check if your site is secure quickly and easily – simply navigate to the site and look in the top right hand corner, in the URL bar. You’ll be able to see a padlock, or a ‘Not Secure’ marker.
At Zinc, we recommend installing an SSL as standard for multiple reasons. Firstly, and most importantly, the protection it offers it vital. The business impact of a data breach is severe, both financially and from the perspective of a customer who no longer trusts a company with their business. Especially with GDPR, it’s no longer worth the risk.
What’s more, the amount of customers who will bounce straight from a site that’s being reported as ‘Not Secure’ is incredibly high. Some aren’t aware of how to bypass the alert in the first place, and those who are won’t necessarily want to browse a site that isn’t protecting their information. Research showed that 84% of users would abandon their purchase if they realised the site wasn’t secure. Are you willing to lose that number of your site visitors?
Finally, from an SEO point of view, Google takes its responsibility to show safe, useful sites to its users very seriously. Sites that don’t have an SSL will be considered as less secure, and therefore rank in lower positions than sites that can offer their visitors the protection of an SSL.
With an SSL Certificate, your site will have an ‘S’ (for secure) after the http:// at the beginning of the URL, display the ‘Secure’ padlock and badge, and stop displaying the warning upon entry to the site. It’s an inexpensive process that can save you a data breach, lost customers and poor Google rankings.
