Easy Ways to Help Boost Your Bottom Line with SSL
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Attending to all of the day to day routines in running a small business can eat up so much of your time that you don’t have any spare moments (or energy left) to devote to actually growing your business. Everything seems to fall into the bucket of “get it done and out the door.”
We’re here to help.
There are only so many ways to reduce the costs of running your business no matter how silver-tongued your negotiations may be, and one person can only juggle so many hats when trying to be the owner, customer service manager, IT department, and graphic designer all rolled into one. (Whew!)
Take a breather and discover some easy things you can do tomorrow to help your business grow. Let’s get right to them!
Let your site visitors know their transactions are secure
People care about security—a lot. They also care about appearances. There’s a reason why your local bank always has employees dressed to the nines, cameras everywhere, and a security guard.
Use this frame of mind when designing your website. With all of the stories of data breaches hitting the news, customers are more wary than ever about handing over their credit card information. They want to feel secure.
Assure them right up front by displaying a SSL (Secure Socket Layer) Trusted Site Certificate in a highly visible location. Use it in multiple places, like your home page, login page, and buy page. It’s recognized worldwide and immediately assures people that they’re dealing with the right business—you.
Show visitors the green bar
Not all SSL certificates are created equally. EV (Extended Validation) certificates include a green bar where you type the URL. The exact appearance differs slightly depending upon which browser you’re using. No doubt you’ve seen this when visiting your financial institution online.
Now, your average customer isn’t going to think, “Aha! That site is using a certificate with extended validation. Cool!” But customers will recognize the visual cue (green means go), and they will have seen it at other sites known for their security and be assured they’re not on some phishing site.
Moving over to EV SSL certificates is painless and it’s an easy way to lump your small business in with the big boys for a fairly nominal annual cost.
Avoid cutting corners on security
To many small businesses, every dollar counts. But while you can save the freshly stocked break area for later, online security doesn’t fall into the “nice to have” category. It’s now essential. One data breach is all it takes to destroy everything that you’ve worked so hard to build up.
While the number of mega breaches decreased in 2014, according to the 2015 Website Threat Security Report, the overall number of breaches increased. As the report recommends, keeping your server configuration up to date and ensuring that old, unsecure versions of the SSL protocol (SSL2 and SSL3) are disabled, and newer versions of the TLS protocol (TLS1.1 and TLS1.2) are enabled and prioritized is the way to go.
Sound like technobabble gobbledygook? It isn’t hard to implement, and the digital stitch in time here could pay off far more than saving time later. Talk to your SSL salesperson and make sure you’re up to speed.
While you may not have the budget of some major corporation (yet!), these methods are some easy ways to tweak your SSL certificates and help you get the most mileage out of them.
