With increasing Internet penetration and the explosion of social
media, small businesses are no longer at a disadvantage. They are able
to sell their products and services to customers from all over the
globe, target audiences in any segment and region and position
themselves for growth. While on-ground infrastructure needs to match to
achieve success, the Internet has ensured that small businesses have a
new avenue of reliable and affordable marketing. They are able to
explain their offerings and are assured of an upward trajectory,
provided their strategies are right.
However, the lynchpin for the
entire operations is a website and all factors revolve around the same.
When visitors come to the website of a small business, they should be
able to get an intuitive feel and easily obtain what they are looking
for. Further, visitors are looking more from a perspective of data
security whenever they engage with any one on the Internet. Hence, the
security of a website is a very important factor and visitors must be
assured of the same, to retain trust and build a bond.
This is
where the role of SSL certificates comes in. The term SSL is expanded to
Secured Socket Layer and this certificate is a small data file that
digitally binds a cryptographic key to the details of the organization.
Organizations need an SSL certificate, in order to initiate a secure
session with browsers. After installation, the application protocol
changes from HTTP to HTTPS and depending on the browser a padlock or a
green bar is displayed.
The key advantages for a small business are
1) SSL is important to drive home business credibility
By proactively installing an SSL certificate, businesses indicate that they care about data security. Installation of an SSL certificate
is not an off-the shelf operation. A governing authority performs
several checks to authenticate a business before the certificate is
issued.
2) Data Integrity
With SSL certification, there is
encryption of data, files are prevented from being corrupted when they
are being transferred and there is protection from malicious attacks. It
is thus assured that information only reaches the intended recipients
and that it is not intercepted by any third party.
3) Google supports SSL
SSL
certification is one of the parameters considered for Google SEO. About
close to 40% of organic listings on the first page of Google are HTTPS.
HTTPS is also a signal in Google's algorithm since 2014.
All of
the above will mean increased customer confidence and conversions, which
is the sole aim of a business having a website. It is thus a no-brainer
that SSL certificates are vital for any small business website.
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