Articles about Websites by DCW Digital

An SSL certificate is a security certificate that can be used by websites to enable secure HTTPS connections and protect their users.

What is SSL?

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a website and a web browser.

An SSL certificate gives your website a padlock that is displayed in your browser bar, reassuring visitors they’re safe on your site.

Watch this short video from SSL.com for a simple but detailed explanation about Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and how they work.

Having an SSL certificate on your website encrypts the site and protects your users from being potential misled or having their data breached when they enter private data via things like a blog comment or contact form.

Your users are also at risk of having their credit or debit card details stolen if you run an eCommerce website that accepts payment details.

The easiest way to know if a website is secure is to check if it has a little green padlock icon to the left of the website address in the address bar.

You can also test the site by adding https:// before the website address when typing it into your browser.

Why You Need an SSL Certificate

Although it’s not yet compulsory to have an SSL certificate installed on your website, it is very highly recommended for a number of reasons.

Establishing Trust

People are more aware and cautious when it comes to their online security today, and they are starting to learn what a non-secure site looks like.

Having a secure website along with a privacy policy and cookie policy on your website shows users that you are professional and trustworthy.

Avoid Being Labelled Dangerous

Most of today’s most common web browsers like Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer will warn a user that a site is non-secure and potentially dangerous before they enter that website.

You can be 100% sure that pretty much nobody will click to proceed to any website when it shows a warning like this one.

Improve Organic Search Rankings

Google introduced SSL as a ranking factor back in 2014 and it appeared to allow a generous grace period for websites to make the change.

But that period has now ended and you can expect to see most non-secure sites now ranking lower than their secured competitor sites.

Conclusion

Having an SSL certificate installed on your website is an essential piece of kit if you want to increase your organic search traffic from search engines and convert those website visitors into paying customers.

Not having a secure website is one of the reasons many websites don’t rank well on Google and other search engines, so it’s a lazy and costly mistake.

When you can get a free SSL certificate from LetsEncrypt, there really is no good excuse for not securing your website and protecting your customers.

PageSpeed Insights (PSI) is a free tool from Google you can use to run a website speed test and get other performance insights on your website.

Simply pop the website address of your website into the Google PageSpeed Insights tool and you’ll see the results in less than 60-seconds.

PageSpeed Insights Overview

The Google PageSpeed Insights tool runs a series of checks on your website using Lighthouse, a speed tool from Google, as its analysis engine.

It also incorporates field data provided by the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) into the tool to add further depth.

PageSpeed Insights reports on the performance of a page on mobile and desktop devices and provides suggestions on how to improve that page.

What’s in the Report?

The report will give your page a score to summarise the performance. You will get a separate score for both your desktop and mobile performance.

A score of 90 or above is considered fast, with 50 to 90 considered moderate and below 50 being considered to be slow.

The insights report gives you a very detailed and somewhat technical performance overview, broken down into manageable tasks to improve.

Real-World Field Data

If your website has enough data, the insights tool will use data from its Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX).

The Chrome User Experience Report provides user experience metrics for how real-world Chrome users experience popular destinations on the web.

Lab data

PSI uses Lighthouse to analyze your webpage and generate a performance score that estimates the page’s performance on different metrics.

Each metric is scored and labelled with an icon:

• Fast is indicated with a green checkmark
• Moderate is indicated with an orange informational circle
• Slow is indicated with a red warning triangle

Audits

Lighthouse separates its audits into three sections:

• Opportunities provide suggestions on how to improve the page’s performance metrics. Each suggestion in this section estimates how much faster the page will load if the improvement is implemented.
• Diagnostics provide additional information about how a page adheres to best practices for web development.
• Passed Audits indicates the audits that have been passed by the page.

Conclusion

Slow websites not only result in poor user experience but are also now penalised by search engines and ranked lower in search results.

Google PageSpeed Insights (PSI) is one of many free website speed test tools available on the web today and can be very useful.

However, the majority of regular website owners may find the detail of the report to be rather technical and difficult to understand.

For a less-technical report, you could consider other free alternatives for testing the speed and performance of your website such as our free website audit or the website speed test by Pingdom.