What is an SSL Certificate and why do you need one for your website?

4 Jan 2021

What is an SSL Certificate and why do you need one for your website?

Sadly, SSL does not stand for Save the Shopping basket for Later but it does stand for Secure Sockets Layer. When visiting most websites nowadays you will see the URL (link) start with HTTPS:// the 's' represents that the website is secure and the data is encrypted (not sent in plain text). You will also see this as a little lock symbol too!

So why do you need one? 85% of online shoppers avoid unsecured websites (Source: GlobalSign) and Google uses HTTPS as a part of where your website will rank in a search (Source: GoogleBlog). So unless you want to lose shoppers and rank low on Google then you should definitely consider adding SSL to your website. If you are an e-commerce website or store your customer's data in any way then you definitely should be using SSL as without you could face a data breach from hackers or worse!

Now onto the good news, your hosting provider may already offer the option of a free SSL certificate with your plan or you can get free SSL certificates from Let's Encrypt. However, this approach is more technical and will require you to manually get a new certificate every 90 days.

Contact us if you require an SSL certificate for your website!