Why web designers and agencies should offer SSL certificates

Hello, Richard here. I’ve been working at ServerTastic for close to a year now, before that I worked for a web design and development agency and we sold SSL solutions to our clients. After building the ServerTastic reseller platform I had just assumed that many of our customers would be from that sort of background, they build a website and then look after their customer with regards to hosting and any other things they need help with. This doesn’t seem to be the case and it got me wondering why.

As a result I took to the social networks to try and understand what it was about them that puts people off. The long and short of it is that people want to spend their time doing things they love and not necessarily dealing with SSL certificates. The thought process seems to be that dealing with SSL is complicated and not worth the hassle.

Revenue

So you’ve built a website, got paid for the job and moved on until the client needs you again. That is typically the routine when delivering websites, you maybe get paid a deposit and then stage payments throughout the life of the project. The problem with this though is that there is no recurring revenue. If you purchase and manage the SSL certificate process on behalf of your client, you don’t only get the chance to invoice for the initial work but also the cost (plus a mark-up) of the certificate and then again every time the certificate is renewed. It means you can earn money from a project for years after you have signed the job off.

Client Retention

By solving the customers headache of purchasing and installing an SSL certificate you have made yourself more indispensable. The customer is less likely to look elsewhere for such services and potentially find alternative agencies.

Client Contact

Because you will need to renew the SSL certificate you have the opportunity to make contact with the client again each year. This can be a good excuse to mention any new innovations you have or possible enhancements to the clients current site. This helps remind your client that you are there to help.

How do you do it?

OK, so I’ve convinced you to look into a little further. Its all very well me saying it’s easy but how can you make this happen?

Many hosting panels will help you through the process so you will just need to provide the correct information at the correct time. I cannot detail here how each one works but you effectively need to go through this process:

1. Purchase your certificate

First of all you need to decide which certificate you want to purchase. They all do the same thing generally speaking, they encrypt data between the user and website and start at $9 with us. If you are securing a website where customer trust is important you need to consider getting the green bar with an EV certificate. We will be posting more about customer trust in future posts.

2. Follow the invite link

Once you have completed the order, you will be sent an invite link. You may complete this on behalf of your client or send it to the customer for them to complete. This link allows details about the customer and website to be entered. The most tricky part at this moment is generating the CSR.

3. Generate a CSR

A Certificate Signing Request is an encrypted file that contains information about the website and company you want to secure. There are many tools out there to help you generate one, including SSLToolBox.com.

4. Complete the process

Once this form is completed and submitted the certificate authority gets to work verifying the data. This process can take as little as 10 minutes but can last much longer depending on the certificate purchased. For example to get an EV certificate the certificate authority have to manually check the details provided against publicly available information.

5. Install the certificate

Once this process has been completed the certificate will be sent to a number of contacts. This file needs to be saved, uploaded to your web server and you web service notified of the change.

6. Done

That’s it! As I say your hosting panel may automate an awful lot of this but if you get stuck check out our help pages and you can always contact us with any questions.