Data security has become a major topic and due to the attention it is receiving, it has rightfully become a serious concern for all internet users. The easiest way to allay your customers' fear is to install an SSL certificate and enable HTTPS on all your pages.
Recently, major browsers have started adding alerts or even warnings in the address bar for websites, which are not secure. While there still is a significant segment of internet users which are likely to ignore these warnings, enough online shoppers will either be reluctant or even actively avoid spending money on an unsecure website. In other words, not having HTTPS enabled will cause you to lose sales. The benefits of having a secure website far outweigh the costs of implementation.
Google has also signalled that they are favouring secure sites in their search rankings and while the effect is small, there is no doubt that every little boost is important for your business.
While in the past it was considered sufficient if only the payment page was secure (the page where bank card details are entered), the rise in cases of Identity Theft and Social Engineering fraud has made it vital for all the pages of a website to be 100% secure. Bank card details are no longer the only thing hackers or other malicious entities are after. Email addresses, names, birthdays, phone numbers and location information are major targets and these can be entered in other areas of the website, not just the checkout or payment page (account sign-up, newsletter sign-up, etc...).
An email address or phone number will lead to a person's social media account. Depending on how careful that person is with what they are sharing, personal information can be extracted and used either to break into certain accounts (by answering security questions about family, pets, music preferences, etc...) or by impersonating them online.
Because of this, all data shared between a customer and your store should always be encrypted. Not only because you need to earn your customers' trust to keep them loyal to your store or brand but also because it is your legal obligation to do so.
Once your SSL certificate is purchased and installed (your hosting provider should have you covered on that front) you can very easily activate HTTPS in your store.
If you are using PrestaShop 1.6, in your store's back-office go to Preferences → General, where the first two options are “Enable SSL” and “Enable SSL on all pages”. Choose YES for both. In PrestaShop 1.7, these two options can be found under Shop Parameters → General.
After SSL is enabled, depending on how your store is set up, it is possible to have mixed content warnings. This means that instead of the green padlock next to the address bar, you have a yellow padlock or one with an exclamation mark next to it. Upon clicking on it to get more information, a message will be displayed stating that the page contains both secure and non-secure items. More specifically, certain internal links or images on your website are loaded over HTTP instead of HTTPS.
Most commonly this occurs in menus, banners, CMS pages, sliders and custom HTML blocks. Below are some of the most common fixes for these issues: