[robfig]

You can't feel the latency?

It adds half a second or more to initial page load times. For doing any sort of marketing where potential customers are arriving at your landing page, that's huge.

[46Bit]

Not necessarily so noticable. I've been running my personal site with https and the effect is fairly minor on the whole in terms of load times. Not zero, but low enough that your average user on the other side of the Atlantic wouldn't notice much of a difference to normal.

Admittedly this is a poor comparison vs a huge site, but then you'll probably find the server processing time is your greater foe.

[dermatthias]

I was refering to my own feeling when loading HN, a (in comparison) very simple website.

I am sorry if it sounded like I was talking about any website in general. That is not the case.

[JoshTriplett]

For some sites, where security particularly matters, using https by default on your landing page seems like good marketing.