Golden Padlock

[simonbridges]

Does anyone know that the SSL padlock and https in the address bar makes a lot of difference to customers in terms number of orders completed. Are there any statitics on this?

[Mike Hughes]

I don't know of any stats and I personally doubt if it still makes much difference.

I don't even notice it anymore when I buy online and I know I'm safe as I'm always by credit card anyway.

Of course, relative novices may still be cautious, and it certainly doesn't hurt to have it their.

Mike

[pinbrook]

This subject was discussed ages ago, and I think I remember that people who moved from builtin encryption to SSL said their orders increased by about 10%.

I would say that the conclusion reached was yes you will lose some orders from people to judge if a site is secure by looking for the padlock, but it isn't a significant number (unless you consider every lost sale as disaster!).

[webyourbusiness]

I reckon on 20% increase for newly minted stores. Those sites with established customer base, and products with a smaller repeat purchase rate, around 10%.

regards

Web Your Business Inc.

ps - an instantssl.com cert is only $49 a year - that's hardly worth losing any sleep over, almost all SHARED SSL providers charge more than that (if not all)!

[cbarling]

I agree with the comments here. Actinic now recommends that one of the security methods that gives the golden padlock is used.

For the vast majority of sites, the cost will be justified by increased orders. As Jo said, that's likely to be at least 10%.

Chris
Actinic

[simonbridges]

Thanks for the replies and advice, as stated £100 a year for a shared SSL seems good value and if it means 10%-20% more orders then its got to be worth it.
Regards

Simon

[webyourbusiness]

Originally posted by simonbridges
£100 a year for a shared SSL seems good value

$49 a year for a dedicated SSL Cert is considerably less!

InstantSSL.com (http://www.instantssl.com/)

[Pneumatus]

Order completion rates are also increased because of the issues of the Java not loading correctly in Windows XP because of the lack of Java VM - An SSL cert removes this whole issue.

[pangit]

Does anybody else have any recommendations for shared SSL certs less than £100? And could I use the InstantSSL.com one, even though it is in the US?

[webyourbusiness]

instantSSL.com are actually based in the UK - they have an office in Aurora, Colorado (a suburb of Denver), but if you call for US support, they route you to the UK offices - kind of odd, as I'm a Brit living about 50 miles from their US office, and I end up talking to an office only 80 miles from my home town in the UK. ;)

We use their certs for customers all over the world.

regards

Greg Hewitt-Long

[paulh69]

www.quickssl.com or www.freessl.com etc.
(almost any would be cheaper than veri$ign or thawte)

[NickD]

I use Claranet as a host, and their SOHO package (less than £100 pa for everything - domain name, hosting, support - the lot) includes free shared SSL.

Nick

[webyourbusiness]

We've just installed our first freessl.com chained certificate for a client, it's working well, was issued in 10 minutes from purchase, and cost $35.

I appreciate that your shared SSL package is only £100 pounds a year, but I personally would never buy from a company that can't be bothered to get their own certificate.... the change of URL from http://www.dobsonwines.co.uk to https://clarahost.clara.net/www.nickdobsonwines.co.uk/cgi-bin/os000001.pl wasn't obvious, but it is something I watch for.

Shared SSL isn't uncommon, but one of the things we caution in our education series, is that anyone with a few pounds or dollars can purchase shared SSL without even being verified that their domain details etc are even valid - not so with a dedicated SSL cert.

We also mention that cutting corners might be the first indication that something isn't quite right - not getting your own domain, your own cert, or operating from a PO Box, no phone number or using large amounts of canned graphics might also be signs of a site that you might not do business with.

In an ever increasing world of scammers and rip-off artists, the extra cost is negligible compared to potential for lost sales:

These are just what we charge - you will find them for less:

Domain: $15 per year
SSL Cert: $35 US Dollars per year
SSL Installation: $30 per cert
Business Hosting $150 per year

Grand total: $230 US Dollars per year - or £143.75 at an exchange rate of 1.6 dollars to the pound.

Doing it "properly" doesn't cost the earth - cutting corners can cost you a whole lot more than £43.75 in lost sales...

Greg