The Green Bar is a Gold Bar - SSL Can Help You Secure to e Commerce Customers - When is a security certificate not just about encryption? When it’s used as a marketing tool to increase sales on your site.
The Green Bar is a Gold Bar - SSL Can Help You Secure to e Commerce Customers
By theSSLstore
Jul 14, 2011 - 8:07:01 AM
Really,
SSL is as much a credibility tool to enhance online trust as it is software to
scramble transactions and keep sensitive online transactions, such as payments,
free from peering eyes. That payment transaction or collection of whatever
secret data is a confidential message between you and the parties wanting to do
business with your website.
A
major part of online business is ensuring the customer that doing business with
you is safe. You may know who you are and that you are
legitimate, but a customer can’t be expected to hold you in such high regard
from the outset. Given the high rate of Internet-based crime, it’s only natural
to think twice before entering one’s information. I experience that myself
every time I take out my credit card, or consider taking it out, for an online
purchase. Stopping that second-guessing before it begins can go a long way toward
both increasing sales and building comfortable relationships with your
customers.
How to
market SSL? It begins with purchasing a quality certificate.
With
a quality certificate, you can proudly display the certificate authority’s
(CA’s) seal on your site, such as VeriSign or GeoTrust or Thawte.
without a quality brand name, your proud display of the seal will only go so
far. As an example, VeriSign is used by 93% of the Fortune 500. There is a
reason why that name is so trusted. It’s the name chosen more often than any
other by big business -- expensive, but the premium certificate for a reason.
GeoTrust, similarly, according to Alexa-Netcraft, is the
most popular site on the Internet’s top 1 million sites. I suspect that part of
the reason for the success of those businesses and those sites, regarding both
of these big-name certificates, is because they use the big-name certificates.
Isn’t trust in the security of a site the most key part of convincing online
shoppers to buy from you? If that is the case, suddenly a more expensive
certificate, a good brand name, seems to be a wise investment.
Now
let’s discuss Extended Validation (EV): Our slogan for EV at The SSL Store is
“The Green Bar is a Gold Bar.” This is not just wishful thinking. According to
extensive case studies conducted by VeriSign of all different sizes and types
of businesses, EV has a major impact on revenue. VeriSign’s average findings suggested
an average 20% upswing in revenue after installation of an EV SSL. Common sense
suggests that Amazon can get away without EV, but it is much more important for
smaller sites to show the green bar to customers because they don’t necessarily
trust you yet as they do Amazon.
The
green bar of EV itself is a huge marketing tool. It loudly and
proudly announces credibility to your potential customers. It doesn’t matter if
someone understands the technology or the validation procedures. What the end
user experiences is their browser for some reason telling them that this site
is green-lighted for your interaction? Their experience is a third-party
recommendation, coming from Microsoft or Mozilla or Google, that this site is
doing the right things to protect them, that it’s safe.
As you
may know, Getting EV SSL or Extended Validation SSL can be complicated. Even
Symantec recently had difficulty getting an EV certificate because of
accidental mismatches in public records. In response to this, SSL certificate
companies are doing their best to make the application process clearer and
simpler, so that SSL shoppers don’t get frustrated and choose a less effective
option. Our online module streamlines the EV process and allows you to be
proactive: https://www.thesslstore.com/ev/extended-validation-ev.aspx.
A
final marketing note: You may have noticed the VeriSign logos
next to sites using that brand in Google or Bing. For those two search engines,
Symantec has a browser add-on estimated to exist on 70 million desktops,
Seal-in-Search. It works in tandem with their daily malware scanner. Every site
using VeriSign gets scanned every day (free). Provided malware does not pop up,
you get the VeriSign seal next to your site. If malware is found, you don’t get
punished; they simply remove the VeriSign Trust Seal next to your entry until
the malware is removed (so your entry looks like all the rest for that period).
Again,
VeriSign may look expensive at first glance. But consider TheFind.com’s study
finding that the VeriSign seal increased the click-through from their search
results and average of 18.5%. Imagine how effective it would be to promote your
site’s security via search engine, before the end-user has even reached your
site. This is a world in which Sony, Citibank, and the IMF are being hacked
(prompting the PC World headline, “No End in Sight to Security Horror Shows”).
VeriSign may be worth it.
The main
thrust of this article is that you get what you pay for, because these aren’t
really technology dollars; after all, you can self-sign a certificate that
encrypts. Browsers just won’t trust it, and neither will customers. Both
browsers and customers want a big-name third party to verify you. That’s when
it becomes a marketing decision. Just like any purchase, it’s an investment;
greater SSL expense generates greater results. ROI and SSL: perhaps these
acronyms should be used in the same sentence more often.
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