I think one aspect of encrypted connections not being the norm is the issue of client caching.

My experience of trying to cache on the client side, data ( from a php script ) requested via GET over https doesnt happen. This is done by design of the browsers as I believe they see it as the better of two evils. ( Not wanting to store secure data and then being attacked for that and losing market share ).

The approach I am using ( which is far from ideal ) is to make use of javascript, which can be cached.