To use a secure checkout or not?

Speed vs Security?

[TimmyMagic]

Hi,

I have had an online store for over 3 years and only up until about 1 month ago I never used a secure checkout. I should point out that my site does not take the card details on the checkout page. These are handled by WorldPay's secure payment page.

Anyway, no one ever said anything, until one day a customer mentioned it. I then looked into it and now use the secure page provided by my host.

The problem is that it slows the checkout down. It must be annoying for customers on a slow connection. So, my question is:

Should i stick with the secure checkout or go back to unsecure, but faster checkout? No one seemed to worry about it before, and perhaps it affects orders.

Tim

[LifeinAsia]

How have your orders been affected since the change? That's the key to look at. If you go back to the way things were before, closely monitor the difference. Don't make any other drastic changes at the same time, otherwise you won't know which one was the cause.

[TimmyMagic]

I can't be sure because it could be due to other factors, but I think orders may have been negatively affected.

Has anyone else experienced this?

[topguy29]

I always make sure that the page that I am entering credit card data on is secure. The other pages, personally I do not care about.

Some people though as soon as they hit checkout, they look for that. If you are pretty happy with your sales, I would leave it as is. You are probably using a shared SSL it seems as well which can actually scare off some people because of the different domain name.

[FalseDawn]

Pages encrypted over https place a heavier load on the server, and will also be rendered slightly slower, as the stream is bloated by encryption, which takes longer to download and decrypt at the client's end.

If you are experiencing appreciable slowdowns, I would say your host is not up to scratch. Are you on a shared host?

[Propools]

For us promoting the fact that our site is SECURE is BIG. When customers are spending this kind of money over the internet, it's nice to know it's secure. We have at the bottom of every page what we feel are three very important links.
1 - Better Business Bureau for our company
2 - GeoTrust for our company
3 - Our Industries Link which shows us as a member

Our clients seem to want to know that we are a REAL company who knows about the products they sell and not someone working out of their home. (not that that's bad) We instill that we are Industry Professionals.

[TimmyMagic]

Yes it is shared hosting, and the secure domain is different.

I am not upto scratch on secure pages, how to get my own, etc. I will have a look into it.

Thanks for your input.

[sniffer]

just make it clear on the page before they leave your site to worldpay that they're about to enter the 'secure area' or whatever. Aside from that I would leave it out