It’s the beginning of December and online shops are knee-deep in preparations for the festive season. What are the best sellers for Christmas 2015, which offers will entice visitors to your website and why-oh-why is the competitor’s website so popular, while yours is limping along?
One reason might be that your visitors aren’t entirely convinced by your products, like that pink plastic Christmas tree, but a more likely reason is that browsing visitors might be unsure whether you are a legitimate website or whether their data and payment details are safe if they choose to transact online with you.
Did you know that 85% of online shoppers say they abandon the shopping basket, if they feel that their data wouldn’t be securely transmitted over the internet?* You don’t need a degree in computer science to provide your browsing visitors with strong security on your website, converting them into paying customers.
5 Features of Website Security to Increase your Online Sales
- HTTPS
HTTPS stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, and shows that the data transmitted between client and server is encrypted and secure. To connect through https, a digital certificate is needed. SSL Certificates are provided at three different levels of verification: Domain Validation, Organization Validation, and Extended Validation depending on the level of trust you wish to portray to your website visitors.
- Padlock Symbol
The padlock visualises what the HTTPS already announces: the data sent through the website is encrypted and secure. By clicking on the padlock symbol the user gets further information about the certificate: which trust level it has been verified to, which encryption level was used to issue the certificate, which root certificate it’s based on, issuing Certificate Authority and validity period.
- Green Address Bar
An EV SSL Certificate also activates the green address bar – a visual reminder about an especially secure connection. Our survey shows that while some people don’t necessarily know which security signs to look out for, nearly all associate the green address bar with a secure connection. In fact, 85% of web users state they wouldn’t buy through a website where they weren’t certain their data was being transferred securely. This illustrates how important it is to have clear and visible security settings so customers will click the “Buy Now” button with confidence.
- Company Name in Address Bar
The company name in the address bar shows that the SSL Certificate in question is an EV certificate. On the one hand the company name demonstrates the high security settings, but it also serves as an emotional assurance. According to our survey, customers automatically trust a page more if clear contact details are given. The company name in the address bar thus appeals to customers in two ways.
- Site Seals
There are a variety of site seals which are considered trustworthy by customers. A site seal allows customers to trust a website, and with the respective logo, visualizes that transactions and data transfers are secure on a website.
More than 75% of people plan to buy Christmas presents online this year (Source: Digital Strategy Consulting). It is therefore not surprising that the last weeks before Christmas contribute more than 20% to the yearly revenue of online retailers (Source: Digital Strategy Consulting). That should be more enough reason to evaluate the existing website security completely.
Visit the GlobalSign SSL pages for more information about website security.
*The GlobalSign survey was conducted in November 2014 with 6,000 respondents in Germany, France, the UK, the Netherlands and Scandinavia to assess the general knowledge of internet security in Europe. All statistics and facts in this post, except where other sources are given, are relying on data from the survey.
