Site Speed Versus All Secure Pages

[Planet13]

Sorry if I missed this before, but please kindly share your opinion on the importance of having ALL secure (https) pages on an ecommerce site if it will negatively affect page load times.

Our host said that it would slow the site down if we used all https pages. They couldn't give me an exact figure for how much slower though.

In your gut feeling, is it likely that any benefits gained by going to all secure pages would be offset by slower performance?

Or does google care so much for having all encrypted pages that I should do it despite the longer load times?

Thanks in advance.

[goodroi]

I am guessing you are asking purely about Google ranking, from my experience site speed and https are both low ranking factors. Https is a smaller ranking factor than site speed right now.

Personally I take a more holistic approach when it comes to internet marketing. If you have an e-commerce site that isn't secure you will lose sales and have a lower conversion rate, so you want a secure site. If you have a slow site, you will also lose some people especially people connecting via mobile so you want a fast website. Even though Google is not giving big ranking rewards for fast & secure websites, I still want my e-commerce sites to be fast & secure. You may need to shop around for a better hosting company or a better coder but IMHO it is worth it for the usability and conversion boost.

[wheel]

I went to all https. It's just easier to redirect 100% of everything from http to https than it is to do it by pages.

Slow down should be nonexistent or your host sucks.

There's no real difference in amount of data transmitted.
I think there's an extra set of negotiations in with the browser, but this is milliseconds.
So the only other potential slowdown is the processing power on your website needed to encrypt the page. That's hardware, and hosts shouldn't be riding the edge that much these days that it would make any difference at all.

[webcentric]

I'm with @wheel on this, if you see a dramatic decrease in speed because you're using SSL, you might want to look for a different hosting company. This discussion about SSL and speed is ancient and has become almost a non-factor. In addition to what @goodroi said, I've used ssl on any form of page that asks a user for any kind of information for years. When G mentioned SSL as a ranking factor, it was an easy move to just add it site wide and I see no appreciable difference in speed. Now I don't have to redirect pages to and from http to https depending on what's on the page. Everything goes to https and I'm a happy programmer. The cost for a certificate is so low, just giving your users a sense of security pays for it.

[netmeg]

I'm going to do it but probably not until they resolve the AdSense implications.

Also I'm not sure if I get to keep all my social shares, so that's an issue too until I figure it out.