As you probably know, there are a lot of things that go into building a website. Planning for design as well as functionality can take a few weeks to several months depending on the size and needs of the website.
Imagine after doing all of this work, instead of visitors seeing a beautiful and engaging website, they see the image below.
Scary to say the least! Even scarier – many web designers have no idea what SSL certificates are or how to add them to your website. Roughly 20% of websites I come across do not have these certificates.
“SSL” stands for “Secure Sockets Layer” and is a certificate verifying that your website is legit. Think of it as a blue checkmark on Twitter. With this SSL certificate, your website URL will now start with “https” instead of “http”. This ensures a “secure connection” according to web browsers.
So what does a “secure connection” mean? Say that you are selling t-shirts on your website – visitors have to enter vital personal information (address, credit card info, etc.) to purchase your awesome merchandise. When your customer hits “purchase”, the information goes from their browser to the website’s server to be stored. With an SSL certificate, that information is encrypted. Basically, that information is converted to a different language that only the receiving server can understand. That way, if a hacker were to somehow intercept it, they would not know what they are looking at and cannot steal it for themselves.
As of a few years ago, all web browsers now show the above warning to give visitors a heads up that the website is not secure.
Oh, and did I mention that all Monitor Media Group websites come standard with SSL certificates for no additional charge? Contact us today to learn more!