Over 30% of solar engineers have not yet arrived in the digital age

Published on: June 15, 2020 / update from: August 20, 2020 - Author: Konrad Wolfenstein

Digital transformation in photovoltaics – *1

At least. As part of data research using AI and competitor analysis, we at Xpert.Digital check, among other things, over 40,000 Internet websites every day for their accessibility and status.

If you keep your website up to date, you have a better chance of being found more quickly. But the first impression and trustworthiness also play a very important role. Before potential customers make contact, they do research online and then decide who to shortlist. How a website is structured, what its content is and its design can be debated. Not only do tastes differ, but everyone also has their own idea of ​​the target group they want to serve.

But there is nothing to discuss about the basic technical requirements. They just have to be there. Especially if you want to be visible in search engines. What good is the most beautiful website if it can't be found because it's way down in the rankings? Or is in an unfortunate position on the 2nd side and the lack of technical adjustments prevents it from sliding forward to the 1st side?

The starting point of our analysis is the HTTP or HTTPS protocol

Everybody knows it. It is mainly used to load websites from the WWW in a web browser.

HTTP vs HTTPS Protocol – *2

Originally, digitization was the conversion of analog data into digital data formats. With the growing number of digitally capable devices and the possibilities of networking, the incentive for more communication in the form of data, voice and images, including moving images (video, film, etc.) also increased. Before the Internet, there were already connected worlds. Company networks, emergency and early warning systems and some more. But it was only with the Internet that gigantic possibilities emerged. People once laughed at the fact that refrigerators and toasters could communicate over the Internet, but today it no longer causes a shrug of the shoulders.

The networking of things is, so to speak, the third wave of digitalization. Internet of Things, e-commerce, smart home, broadband communication and Industry 4.0 are children of this development.

Before that, in the 2nd wave, the conditions were created so that a wide variety of devices could uniformly process the various data formats that had grown immensely up to that point.

The core and basic framework, without which advancing digitalization would not work, are the communication protocols.

The most essential and important are the Internet Protocol (IP) and the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), which can be found in a wide variety of applications such as HTTP, IMAP, SMTP, DNS, among others.

HTTPS is a further development of HTTP. With this protocol, data can be transmitted in a secure or encrypted manner and third parties cannot listen in or read as with HTTP.

2 points that HTTPS serves as an indicator of advancing digitalization are the following:

• Easy to integrate
• Latest status

For Germany, we checked 2,808 solar installer websites

In Germany, 69.84% (1961) used the HTTPS protocol. 30.16% (847) were only accessible via simple HTTP.

Things are looking worse in Austria at the moment. Of the 507 websites checked, only 62.33% (316) were accessible via HTTPS and 37.67% (191) were accessible via HTTP.

But Switzerland performed best: 76.96% (431) had the HTTPS protocol and only 23.04% (129) could only be accessed via HTTP.

A look at Poland shows a different picture: Here 52.85% were accessible via HTTPS and 47.15% via HTTP. Here too, there is a lot of room for improvement in the area of ​​digitalization!

But it also shows that many companies do not yet really know how to deal with digitalization. What's the point? Where does it lead and what are the advantages?

There are different answers to this because it depends on local conditions, implementation options and company goals.

Better communication, lead increase, faster work processes, etc. are too general and not convincing enough for most people. There is usually also a suspicion that it is more beneficial to the service provider offering than to yourself.

There are important reasons why HTTPS should be used

Without encryption, data transmitted over the Internet is readable as plain text by anyone with access to the corresponding network. With the increasing spread of open (ie unencrypted) WLANs, the importance of HTTPS is increasing because it allows content to be encrypted independently of the network.

Browser address line with https protocol – *3

HTTPS is therefore used to ensure confidentiality and integrity in communication over the Internet.

The other advantages are obvious:

• Data protection. Greater data security. Protection against hackers. This leads to more trust, a clear trust signal!
• Certifying an SSL certificate for HTTPS represents trustworthiness and security. Anyone who doesn't have it yet is considered digitally backward.
• If an SSL certificate is missing, browsers warn about insecure logins. In short: No warning messages on login forms.
• Speed: Faster loading times. If HTTPS is missing, the more current, better and faster HTTP/2 protocol version is also missing. Because this is only possible with HTTPS. This ensures that after the first website query, all subsequent page views are significantly faster. This reduces the charging time by a factor of 10.
• HTTPS is a positive ranking factor on Google: Better positions in Google searches.

http vs https protocol – *4

Photos: *1 @shutterstock | abriendomundo – Artistdesign29 / *2 @shutterstock | MIKHAIL GRACHIKOV / *3 @shutterstock | Media Guru / *4 @shutterstock | Makstorm