Now more than ever a majority of businesses are carried out online even when they may have a physical office and offline presence.
With the advent of digital marketing and using online to get customers and clients, business owners have seen the need to build an online presence for their brand or services.
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Building an online presence for businesses often involves having a website because having a website and one that ranks when certain keywords that your business is known for our input, keep you ahead of your competitors.
With websites, it is easier more than ever to run ads that can attract prospective customers for your business.
Running successful ads and getting sign-ups requires that businesses secure their data because these customers and prospects trust that their information will not be misused.
Even when things are put in place to avoid a data breach, several businesses still have their data breached, this is why having an SSL certificate is required. SSL certificates can be either wildcard, single domain, multi-domain, etc. If a business is running on e-commerce platform then, a wildcard is a sure-win strategy. You can choose DigiCert wildcard, Sectigo Wildcard SSL or Thawte Wildcard SSL for website security.
Having customers’ data hacked and misused can be detrimental to a business owner because he or she will lose trust and without trust, many businesses cannot survive. Asides from this primary function of an SSL certificate, it also helps to improve a webpage load speed which is important because a customer cannot wait forever for your website to load when there are other alternatives.
In this article, you will know what an SSL certificate is, how it is beneficial to a website and how it can increase your webpage load speed.
What is an SSL certificate?
It is an abbreviation for Secure Sockets Layer though it was formerly called Transport Layer Security (TLS)
It is a digital certificate used to secure the information or data that is stored on a particular web server or website. Business owners especially e-commerce websites need it.
Knowing a website that has an SSL certificate like Thawte Wildcard SSL is easy because there is usually a padlock on the site’s address bar.
This padlock makes a customer trust that a website is secure and they feel okay carrying out financial transactions.
Benefits of SSL certificate
Security
The primary reason people like having an SSL certificate on their website is the security of that website and customers’ information.
With the digital certificates on your website, you and your customers are assured that your customers’ data is safe and secure from attack.
The security of data is possible because of the encryption of these data transferred through the web.
So, even when hackers may want to attack or hack into the information transferred it is impossible because they cannot read the encrypted data.
Additionally, your website won’t be used for hacking your visitors or your email connected to your website can’t be used for scamming people.
Credibility
Visitors of a website especially e-commerce websites view the website and website owner as credible when they see the HTTPS and padlock on the site address bar.
When the HTTPS sign is lacking, customers will be reluctant to share their personal information or data on that website.
So, an SSL certificate helps to increase trust between business owners and prospects or customers.
SEO
Nearly all website owners want their website to rank on Google and other search engines and this is possible when your website is secure.
Website security ensures that when keywords relating to your website are mentioned, they will come up because your website is prioritized by Google.
Also, your website will be secure which means that a warning that your website isn’t secure won’t come up and scare visitors away.
This means that as a website owner, you won’t experience any bounce rates which will lead to a drop in traffic and ranking.
How does an SSL certificate make a webpage load fast
Increase transfer of data
By introduction of HTTP/2, the issue of slow data transfer is resolved. In early times, once the website sends a request, it has to wait for a long time. The browser after sending a response, it has to wait a long to receive the server’s response. As a result, the website speed was drastically slow. Moreover, such low response website consumes more server resources.
HTTP/2 uses a single connection and allows a browser and a server to send a request and receive multiple web elements. As a result, the website loading time and latency is reduced. It saves user’s time in accessing a web page.
Server Push
Server Push is an integral part of HTTP/2. It allows server to push extra resources to HTTP/2 compliant browser even before a user sends request for it. The users do not request such extra resources. However, the server upfront send such information. Server Push can reduce the server loading time and latency. Server push is an anticipated request done by the server.
Compression of Header
Headers inform to the server about the details a user is searching or looking for. Headers states the resources to be transferred from the server to the user.
HTTP/2 lessens the header size and improves the webpage loading speed. In contrast, HTTP only carry up to 800 bytes size of headers.
SSL certificate has a direct correlation to website performance. However, hosting providers now consider HTTP/2 feature. Before selecting a hosting plan, a user should check whether the provider offers HTTP/2 feature or not.
Other ways to improve webpage speed
Through CDN
CDN means content delivery network and when you sign up for it, it improves your webpage load speed because of how it works.
Having visitors on your website from different parts of the world means that if you don’t use CDN your webpage speed will be low.
But, with a CDN, each time a request is made to the server through a browser the answer will be communicated using the nearest data center to the visitor.
Caching
This is another way you can use to improve your webpage speed. Caching is used to give visitors of a website static HTML files.
Final thoughts
Having a website that has a high loading speed helps to get prospects and retain customers because a webpage that loads fast makes it easy for visitors to access your website without waiting for long.
So, get an SSL certificate to improve your website loading speed through the server.
