If you are relatively new to ecommerce then you have probably been bombarded with a wealth of information about payment gateways, merchant accounts and SSLs. In order to create a secure website capable of accepting credit cards, the first thing you need in order to keep your website secured is an SSL certificate.

SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer. It is a protocol that is used to securely encrypt and transmit data over the internet. An SSL certificate is required if you want to accept credit cards online.

The standard SSL uses 128 bit encryption, with the ability to go up to 256 bits if both the client and host support it. All this means is that the certificate uses a 128 bit key to encrypt your data. This is very hard to crack so you and your customers can rest assured that you customer’s sensitive data is secure.

There are three basic types of SSLs

1. Shared SSL provided by your host
2. SSL with Intermediate Certificate
3. Standard SSL

Shared SSL – A shared SSL is usually a free SSL certificate provided by your web hosting company. It works by seamlessly transferring your customer to a secure sub domain of your host. For example if you site was, www.myssl.com and you had Miva Hosting with Hostasaurus.com, when you customer went to checkout, they would be transferred to myssl.hostasaurus.com which uses the SSL from the web hosting company.
This is free and easy way to secure your website.

SSL with Intermediate Certificate – An SSL with an intermediate certificate is usually the cheapest of all SSLs (besides the free shared SSL). It provides you and your customers with the same 128 bit encryption, and usually costs only $19.95 a year. A great SSL with an intermediate certificate is from GoDaddy.com. An intermediate certificate is exactly what it sounds like. It is an inherited certificate from an already trusted root certificate - effectively creating a certification chain of trust.

Standard SSL – This is the most common of SSL certificates but also the most expensive. They usually come with a Guarantee ranging from $50,000 to $1,000,000. This Guarantee provides your Web site visitors with assurance that your site is a safe place to do business with online. One of the easiest to use and install SSLs for Miva Merchant is from Network Solutions The basic SSL is $89 a year and comes with a $50,000 guarantee.

Once you have decided on which SSL is right for your website, you need to make sure you display the SSL site seal on every page of your site. Most all SSL come with a site seal that users can click on and verify that your site is actually secure. This gives your customers confidence that you site is secure and placing the site seal on your website will usually increase your customer conversion rate.

Here is the site seal for Network Solutions:

How do you know if your SSL is installed and working properly?
The easiest was to test you new SSL is to add a “s” in front of the “http” in you website, like this: https://www.yoursite.com

This will take you to a secure page if your SSL is installed properly and you will see a small lock in your web browser.

If this lock (or a similar lock depending on your browser) shows up without getting any certificate warnings then you know you certificate is installed and working properly.

About the Author: Brennan Heyde is an e-commerce consultant working in San Diego, Ca. He specializes in online marketing and SEO for e-commerce. Have a struggling e-commerce website? – Contact Brennan today for a site analysis.