As a website owner, it’s natural you want only the best for your website. You invest money in the business, so you want your website to support it in the best way. Also, making a good, stunning website is a big investment that requires planning, many resources, and the hope that it will be a website that’ll serve you for a long-time. A good website means many visitors, many conversions, lots of profit (of course, something depends on the business, too).

If you want to establish a trustworthy website there are many steps you need to make. One of the first tasks that are highlighted nowadays in security tasks. In the sea of websites, you don’t want your website to be marked as unsafe, so there’s an SSL. Security Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate is the main thing that can affect all security aspects, including a part of a website’s SEO, user experience, etc.

What exactly SSL is and why it is so important, we’re talking in the down rows.

What is an SSL certificate?

Secure Sockets Layer or shortly an SSL is a certificate that secures (as its name suggests) and additional safety that protects all pieces of information visitors choose to share with your website. The secure connection that SSL provides is made by the encrypted link between a web server and a browser that ensures all data passed through that “tunnel” remains private.

If your website is secured with an SSL certificate, you can access it through HTTPS protocol – that means you’ll see a padlock beside the URL. Shortly, an SSL certificate is the guardian of the information providing that everything you’re sharing with the website will not leak to anyone. It is especially important with e-commerce websites when you need to share private information like bank card numbers, etc.

Is an SSL certificate essential?

Starting from 2017, Google announced that all websites without an SSL certificate will be flagged, due to the fact that online security became a key goal and necessity for every website. The reason for this was more than serious – an increasing number of cyber threats and attacks made most of the websites more vulnerable and devastated than ever.

To avoid potential threats and to protect websites, big browsers like Google and Mozilla require mandatory for all websites to be equipped with an SSL certificate. To be sure every website provides it, they develop security warnings (red, you know it probably) that alert users that the website connection is not secure. So yes, it is essential, and now we’ll see why.

Why is SSL important?

Any information you are sharing with a website is sent like a small textual package in a form of plain text over the network by your computer using the HTTP protocol. It doesn’t matter if you’re filling a request for a newsletter via email, filling the contact form, or shopping online using your credit card number, information is traveling over the network. It basically means that hackers can sniff around and intercept unencrypted information, which isn’t as threatening when you’re just requesting to search over the website and going from page to page, but it can be really problematic when it comes to some personal information.

It will pass years and years till the internet becomes a completely safe place – HTTP protocol doesn’t guarantee that information can’t be intercepted, but it provides that every one of its packages will be encrypted before sending. Only the intended recipient will be able to read the message. It is something, at least.

There are plenty of reasons why an SSL certificate is important that supports the previous facts about encrypted information, and we’re giving you the most important ones.

1. Online shopping and payments – this is a field when a secure connection is an absolute must. When it comes to money transfer or online payments security must be on the highest level because not that’s just personal information, but it can lead to information leaking and money abuse. Your customer must be sure that everything shared with your website stays between you two.
2. Data security – of course, credit card information must always be top confidential, but what’s with the other personal data? Email addresses, personal information you’re sharing via social media chat channels, or just chats in messaging applications are at risk, especially in the last year when the threats are everywhere. SSL is here to provide safe passage of information, eliminating any third-party access to it or preventing potential hacker attacks in the case of the worst scenario. If your website encourages users to sign up or fill any contact form, be sure you highlighted that SSL provides safety.
3. Website and information verification – when you have an SSL on your website, you’ve a verified owner, which is stopping hackers (in most cases) from impersonating your website due to providing personal information and misuse it. When it comes to the verification of the information, it means that all information listed on the website is authenticated, which is especially important with websites containing medical information, news, etc.

The most common question

1. Does an SSL certificate affect a website speed

No. In fact, SSL helps improve loading speed – it works with the HTTP/2 protocol which helps to improve the general performance of the website, so naturally, speed will be increased too. If you have a problem with the loading speed, maybe you should check your hosting provider first. The cheapest hosting solutions aren’t always capable of supporting any kind of website, so choose a solution that is appropriate for your website. Hostinger has solutions for all kinds of websites and guarantees top loading speed. There are also other factors that can slow down your website, more technical nature connected to the website architecture.

Of course, you should check if your website is properly optimized for better loading speed. Optimization plays a big part in general performance so don’t underestimate optimizing.

2. Is SSL a legal requirement

It depends on the type of service you’re providing via your website. If you’re collecting vital user data like ID numbers, credit card information, etc, SSL is a legal requirement, and you need to have it. On the other hand, if access to your website requests details like name or geolocation, SSL is not a legal requirement.

Anyway, legal requirement or not, SSL gives your website, not just security, but also a status and credibility because every website looks more confidential with it. We must agree that a security warning when a website is not secure isn’t something you want to see on your website.