Have you heard of SSL?Â
Do you sometimes get warnings that your website or sites that you are visiting are not secure?Â
In this blog I’m going to explain a bit about what SSL is and why it’s important for your website and for browsing on the internet in general.Â
Enjoy!
You can watch the video here:
If you’re folding washing or on a walk you can listen to it here:Â
What is SSL and Why Does it Matter?
Or if you like reading, here are the main highlights:
What is SSL?
SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer and is an additional level of security you can place on your site. It basically encrypts and encodes any data that leaves one user and goes to another user.
For example, when you enter your credit card details into a checkout on a website, your information travels through the internet as data. This data gets sent to the business who you are buying from or their payment processing company like PayPal and the like. That is the basis of the internet – data travelling from there to me.Â
Why do I need SSL?
If you don’t have an SSL certificate on your website, users may get a warning that your site is not secure.Â
This will stop most poeople from visiting your site.Â
Sometimes this warning will display very early in the process of your website being built if your developer hasn’t activated your SSL yet. You should get in touch with them and your host to resolve this if it’s displaying once your site is live.Â
It used to be the case that only businesses who were selling products desired an SSL but nowdays all websites will use SSL to maximise trust with their visitors.Â
Why does it matter?
If you are the website user, it is important that you don’t enter any personal or payment details into a website that doesn’t have an SSL. It is very helpful to know how to check this if your browser doesn’t give you this information (see the video for how to check).
And if you are the website owner, it is essential that your website visitors feel that their data is safe with you or they won’t want to make purchases and they may not even feel safe to visit your site at all!
Do want to chat about your website?
I help people create Simple, Beautiful websites. I also love to help people feel empowered about their website so they can use it without having to worry about breaking it!
If you need a hand or would like to chat about how I can help you, go ahead and click the button below and make a time for a free chat (using my secure scheduling tool 🙂 )