SSL Certificates

An SSL, or Secure Sockets Layer, is an encryption technology created by Netscape. It creates an encrypted connection between your web server and your visitors' web browser allowing for private information to be transmitted more securely.
To enable SSL on a website, you will need to get an SSL Certificate that identifies you and install it on the server. The presence of an SSL certificate on a website is usually indicated by a padlock icon in web browsers but it can also be indicated by a green address bar. Once you have done the SSL install, you can access a site securely by changing the URL from http:// to https://. When an SSL certificate is installed on a website, you can be sure that the information you enter (contact or credit card information), is secured and only seen by the organization that owns the website.
Millions of businesses use SSL certificates to secure their websites and help their customers to trust them. To use the SSL protocol, a web server requires the use of an SSL certificate. SSL certificates are provided by Certificate Authorities (CAs).

If you require sensitive information to be entered on your web site, such as credit card numbers or personal information, you need to secure it with SSL encryption. It is possible for every piece of data to be seen by others unless it is secured by an SSL certificate.
Your customers won't trust your web site without an SSL certificate. According to Gartner Research, nearly 70 percent of online shoppers have terminated an online order because they did not "trust" the transaction. In those cases, 64 percent indicated that the presence of a trust mark would have encouraged them to continue the transaction. An SSL certificate and a site seal could stop people from abandoning your website and that means more money for you.
Moreover Google has been know for penalising (rating lower) websites that don't have SSL certificates installed.

A certificate authority is an entity which issues digital certificates to organizations or people after validating them. Certification authorities have to keep detailed records of what has been issued and the information used to issue it, and are audited regularly to make sure that they are following defined procedures. Every certification authority provides a Certification Practice Statement (CPS) that defines the procedures that will be used to verify applications. There are many commercial CAs that charge for their services (VeriSign). Institutions and governments may have their own CAs, and there are also free Certificate Authorities.
Every certificate authority has different products, prices, SSL certificate features, and levels of customer satisfaction.

The SSL certificate that you purchase to secure your web site must be digitally signed by another certificate that is already in the trusted store of your user's web browsers. By doing this, the web browser will automatically trust your certificate because it is issued by someone that it already trusts. If it isn't signed by a trusted root certificate, or if links in the certificate chain are missing, then the web browser will give a warning message that the web site may not be trusted.
So browser compatibility means that the certificate you buy is signed by a root certificate that is already trusted by most web browsers that your customers may be using. Unless otherwise noted, the certificates from all major certificate providers listed on our website are compatible with 99% of all browsers.