All that junk about customers “Caring about their privacy” and being “Worried about identity theft” is unfounded. Just ask my friend “John” from Indonesia. Hey, by the way, he has $30,000,000.00 he wants to send you- he just needs your credit card number along with your name and billing address.
Never mind that SSL certificates enable the 128bit encrypted tunnel between the customers computer and your payment processor – all that stuff can just be sent plain text across the internet. SSL certificates cost money, and you are on a budget.
Sure, the customer can sue you after your website is responsible for their identity theft, but that’s not very likely to happen. After all, you treat your customers like they are dumb and their personally identifiable information is worthless, so they probably don’t have the smarts to hire a lawyer to sue you into the poor house. After all, $50 is a lot of money for security and peace of mind!
If you didn’t already realise, all of the above is supposed to be tongue in cheek. Adding SSL (Secure Socket Layer) to your website is just about THE most important thing that you can do. I recently saw an offer at namecheap.com for SSL for $15 per year. At those prices, can you afford not to add SSL?
What’s that you say – you don’t know what SSL is?!? In very basic terms, it’s the little padlock you see when you are on some websites…makes sense now?
Read on, to find out why you MUST add a SSL Certificate to your site…
It does not matter if you plan on using Paypal, Authorize.net, Worldpay, ProtX or some other provider. Your site is going to be collecting personal identifiable information in the form of shipping addresses, phone numbers, and customer names. You need an SSL certificate. No ifs, ands or buts about it.
SSL certificates vary in price from $20-$400 a year. Make sure you get a minimum 128 bit security certificate- the rest of the price variation is in name brand recognition of the certificate issuer.
I personally think that Geotrust is the best balance of value for price, but there are many others much cheaper and more expensive. Do your research, and buy the one that would make YOU must comfortable as a consumer.
Most of this post is courtesy of my good friend Jason over at JC Commerce.