SSL Certificates - Nitrosell.com showing during check out

Hi there,

During checkout, the domain showing on the address bar is nitrosell.com and it causes confusion for our customers as if they are being redirected to a site they do not recognize…

Seems like NS does not support per-store SSL certificates.
Is it something that will be fixed soon or is there any way around it?

Thanks,
Mohsen

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Hi Mohsen,

The purpose this serves is load balancing and redundancy. Having multiple secure URLs for checkout on nitrosell.com ensures that even if one or two servers go down, your checkout will remain in place.

Can I ask if you have actually received shopper feedback to this effect? With NitroScript the look and feel of your store is completely consistent with your normal URL, so most shoppers neither notice nor care in our experience. We have individual retailers processing millions of dollars of transactions a year and it doesn’t seem to hamper conversions for them.

We may consider supporting it in future, but, in general, it’s not a feature that’s in high demand so it’s not high on our list.

Regards,
Donogh

Hi Donogh,

Thanks for your quick reply.
Well, yes it came from a customer but he is very technical and is very attentive to details. I agree with you that many customers wouldn’t even notice as the look and feel of the site doesn’t change at all.

Just one general question… Do you guys at NitroSell prefer us to submit tickets through our WSM or through the forum? I personally think if we ask through the forum, it could be a reference for others to use.

Best,
Mohsen

Hi Mohsen,

Ah, I see. That makes sense.

You’re right, the forum is definitely preferable, please, unless it’s a billing issue.

Kind regards,
Donogh

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Acutually, studies have proven that many customers DO look at the address bar… Having an SSL Certificate (specific to your company) has been shown to improve conversions by 20%-50% (will post source ASAP).

Other things like trust badges (i.e. “McAfee Secure”, “PayPal Verified”, “Verisign (now Norton)” have been shown to increase customer “trust” by up to 75%. Which means- better conversions & more sales…

We have not launched our new NitroSell site yet, so I do not know if integrating your own SSL certificate is allowed. @donogh? Can we use our own SSL certificate?

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Personally, I would not make a purchase if I happened to notice a mismatched SSL certificate. Sure, having one is better than not having one, but having a certificate with a different company’s name on it seems pretty “sketchy”.

Badges are all well and good.

I’m sure there are some general studies but I’d be impressed if you found one specific to this exact scenario. There are a lot of benefits to our load balancing and redundancy that you wouldn’t get with an individual cert at checkout.

All of our sites say ‘Powered by NitroSell’ in the footer of every page. We even offer a ‘secured by NitroSell’ badge that can be added on request, which reinforces the association.

As I already specified in my first reply, we do not currently support the use of individual certs. Believe it or not, this isn’t in high demand.

I don’t doubt there are benefits regarding load balancing and redudancy (I’m not going to pretend to know what those terms mean…). I was not aware of a “Secured by NitroSell” badge, and that is (IMO) a step in the right direction!

True, I am not familiar with the OP’s particular situation (as I have not seen their site). The studies I was referencing are definately dated somewhat, but the general idea is covered here:

Cart Abandonment Study - If you scroll down to the surveys section - Question 5, you will see mention of the address bar and SSL certificates. It claims that ~75% of 126 participants pay attention to the https status in the URL address bar in browsers.

Also, notice the fact that a few reputable companies’ badges are included in the study, but they do not perform too well. Comodo (coincidentally listed as the “Verified by:” of the NitroSell Certificate) and their badge tested poorly. This means nothing obviously (two different things (badges/certs). I suppose what I am getting at is that (apparently) there are some benefits to having certain badges (PayPal, McAfee, Norton).

More Statistics (Not sure how reputable this one is but regardless…)
DigiCert

Here is a case study regarding Overstock.com and their use of SSL certificates…
Verisign Case Study

I admit, this is not my specialty, but I do personally feel that (even if the gains are minor) having trust badges are beneficial, and that having an SSL certificate (that is owned by our company) along with the green address bar can affect conversions.

EDIT: I believe you (that it isn’t in high demand)!

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Hi Derek,

Thanks for the follow up and all the information. I guess these don’t necessarily point to higher conversions. There is definitely benefit to trust badges, for sure.

Anyway, we’ll take another look at this and see what’s involved. From what I recall the biggest challenge is that every cert will need to be on every one of our web servers, to ensure load balancing still works. A more straightforward way would be to have a separate subdomain for the secure checkout, e.g., www.yourdomain.com for the store itself and secure.yourdomain.com for the checkout. Would that be appealing?

@jbw, would you mind giving us a rough estimate of how much time would be involved, please?

Thanks,
Donogh