You are not required to have an SSL certificate for your ecommerce web site but it is in your best interest. This article has information on the purpose of SSL certificates, and what SSL certificate requirements must be made to get an SSL certificate.

If you have an ecommerce Web site, and you plan to engage in payment transactions over the Internet, it is important that you have an SSL certificate. SSL certificates let your customers know that they are using a secure connection and that their personal payment information is kept safe. SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer, which is associated with port 443 on the Internet, providing encrypted communication transfers. If you do not have an SSL certificate, your customers’ browsers will alert them, warning them not to engage in business transactions on your Web site. You could lose business if you do not have an SSL certificate.

Purposes of an SSL certificate

There are two main purposes of SSL certificates: verify your identity and secure a transfer of information. Both of these are important to savvy online shoppers.

Verifying your identity: The company that issues the SSL certificate is a trusted third party that attaches a specific identity to your Web site, the server used and even the main computer you use. This allows you to be identified as who you are, providing the customer some peace of mind that you are really who you say you are.

Securing communication lines: The other thing an SSL certificate does is to generate encryption and keys to help interpret the encryption. Your SSL protection takes information from your customers, and turns it into a string of numbers that doesn’t look intelligible to a third party. The key, which can only be used by those with proper authorization, allows you to see the information and complete the transaction.

SSL certificate requirements

When you get an SSL certificate, you have to submit information that the SSL certificate company can verify. You generate what is known as a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) to submit to the SSL certificate company. The directions for generating this depends on you platform and your server. However, the information that you most likely to be required to provide in order to get an SSL certificate includes:

• Common name: This is the common name of your site, or your domain name. It is basically yourcompany.com. It is important to realize, though, that something like payment.yourcompany.com is different, and needs a different SSL certificate. If you want your payment site to be protected, you specify the common name as payment.yourcompany.com.
• Organization information: You will also have to provide detailed information about your company. You need to provide the name of your company and/or your department. Realize that symbols (&, -, @, etc.) are not acceptable. Decide whether you want to get rid of the symbol or spell it out. You will also need to include the name of the town, state and country that you are in. Make sure that the state or province is spelled out, and that you abbreviate your country with the proper two-letter code.
• Contact information: Even though you do not need contact information to get your SSL certificate, you are asked to provide it. This is because you may be contacted by the SSL certificate generator. You want to be able to be contacted. You will need to provide your email, phone, address and fax number.

Once you have generated your CSR, you can submit it to the SSL company. The SSL company will send your certificate once you have been verified. Then you can install the certificate using the instructions that come with whatever platform you have.

SSL certificate requirements are a little bit easier if you have an ecommerce Web host that can help you set everything up. In some cases, your ecommerce host can help you get your own SSL certificate. In other cases, you can make use of a shared certificate that the Web host already has. Either way, however, you will have to pay for SSL protection. When you get your own certificate, you normally pay once a year (or once every two years) to keep your protection current. When you go through your ecommerce Web host, you usually pay a monthly or yearly fee that is bundled into your regular hosting packaging.

Consider your needs before deciding whether to get your own certificate or get one through your Web host. Getting one through your Web host is less expensive, but it doesn’t offer the same flexibility as a more expensive unique SSL certificate.

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