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 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.