The care and feeding of digital certificates

How to build trust with your customer even before your home page loads!

• How do you ensure your customer stays on your website and not runs screaming from the home page?
• How do you establish instant legitimacy?
• What happens if you lose the trust of your buyers?

Meet John, an entrepreneur of sporting ware who is new to e-commerce.

John is ready to sell his designer footballs online. He has the perfect e-store, a terrific website and the Super Bowl is around the corner.

He kicks things off the week before with a big launch on social media. His traffic numbers skyrocket but the cash is illusive. He checks the comments and he is being called a fraudster, a conman etc. Many people are complaining that his website is bad and is infected.

A tweet from @securetom about how not to get scammed during Super Bowl catches his attention. That is when he learns about the pad lock icon in the browser and digital certificates.

He checks his web host, for applying a digital certificate ticks a checkbox and there comes the pad lock icon for his site.

It takes less than an hour for the cash to begin piling up.

You could be in John’s shoes unless you do this one basic thing. It is free and easy to do and is a key component of the internet. It is rapidly becoming ubiquitous and soon, browser makers will alert your customers if this ingredient is not on your website.

The site does not have to sell anything. It is becoming synonymous with legitimacy.

This used to be very expensive initially and still is if you want all the trimmings, but you need to know when to go for them.

So, what is this ingredient? It is called a digital certificate. It is issued by a certifying authority and is used to protect traffic between your customer’s browser and your website’s server.

I have released a short book that gives you the a-to-z of digital certificates. How to get them for free, what they mean and how they are used.

Introducing the care and feeding of digital certificates.

Inside this eBook, you will find topics such as:

• how web pages are served,
• What the lock icon means,/li>
• What your customer thinks when she sees that lock icon,
• The need of digital certificates,
• how to get them for free,
• what to do if the certificates are stolen,
• How the certificates help you retain your customer.
• And much more.

• To summarize, I will give you a guided tour of these certificates and show you where to find them. Most of us do not give digital certificates a thought but they underpin today’s e-commerce infrastructure. Yes, your internet service provider or hosting provider has knowledge bases full of articles on them, but that information is fragmented. My book, the care and feeding of digital certificates starts from scratch therefore there is no need for you to know anything about websites or eCommerce.

Can’t I find this information online?

Of course, you can but as I will show in the sources section, this information is fragmented and does not explain all that you need to know to effectively manage these certificates. In addition, you need to be aware of the threats to this model of e-commerce so that you can adapt as security practices change.

This book is not for you if:

• You Have completely outsourced security and do not care about all that technical stuff.
• If you are already familiar with digital certificates
• If you have gathered fragmented information on digital certificates from different places and feel it is adequate

This book is for you if:

• You are an entrepreneur and want to be able to serve your customers without problems
• you are a writer or other professional and need to establish legitimacy
• you have a message to give to the world and want to be believed

The key point to remember is that our entire eCommerce infrastructure relies on trusted certificates. The certificate starts its job before the home page loads and it impacts you because the certificate is the next element, after the domain name that your customer will experience. Once again, this is before your home page loads.

Note

• Upon clicking the buy link, you will be taken to Zaxaa which is my shopping cart handling service. Please follow the prompts and you will get the product.
• All prices are in US dollars.