HTTPS: Why It Should Be Enabled on Your Website

On November 25th, 2019 / By Hamzah Khadim

HTTPS is an Internet webpage protocol you can use to help make browsing experiences more secure for your visitors. HTTPS encrypts the communications between the site visitor and the webpage they are visiting. Why does this matter?

Let’s say the visitor is reviewing their previous order history on your ecommerce shopping website and you do not have HTTPS enabled. When the data between the customer’s device and your site is being exchanged, someone could “look over their shoulder” and discover their personal information, like their address, stored credit card number, and so on.

With HTTPS enabled, customer data, shopping experiences, and other such sensitive data is kept encrypted and puts your customers’ and site visitors’ at ease, knowing their data is being kept as secure as possible. Besides providing secure shopping for your customers, other reasons you will want to enable HTTPS includes:

• Google’s Chrome browser is tagging non-secure websites. With the start of the New Year, Google is now tagging websites without HTTPS and alerting site visitors using Chrome they are accessing a website and content that is not secure.
• Businesses need AMP and AMP only works with HTTPS. AMP is short for Accelerated Mobile Pages and is what makes web pages load fast on mobile devices, and is a “must-have” for any website today. AMP also requires HTTPS to be enabled in order to function. Plus, it is anticipated Google will implement new guidelines in 2017, where AMP sites will get higher rankings and preference over non-AMP sites.
• HTTPS helps improve SERPs (Search Engine Rating Placements). Google has started giving preferential treatment to sites with HTTPS enabled, just like they did last year for mobile-friendly websites. This means sites that are not HTTPS enabled will start to be pushed down further on the results lists, beneath both HTTPS enabled and mobile-friendly sites.
• Helps prevent losing current and potential customers to your competitors.The vast majority of people will avoid making purchases from or providing personal information on non-secure websites. If your site is not HTTPS enabled, there is a good chance people will find a competitor, who offers an HTTPS enabled browsing experience.

How Do I Tell If a Site is HTTPS Enabled?

It is easy to tell which sites are HTTPS enabled by looking to the left of the web address and finding the padlock icon contained in today’s web browsers. If this padlock icon is green, it means the site is secure and data being sent back and forth is encrypted. If it is gray or any other colour, it often indicates the connection is not fully encrypted and others could potentially “eavesdrop,” so you should be extremely careful and avoid providing personal or sensitive information. Another way you can tell is by looking at the actual website address and if it begins with “https,” then it is a secure site.

For assistance with enabling HTTPS on your website, call Logik Digital – the leading SEO and website design service company in Toronto at 1-866-307-0086 today! Remember to request your FREE website analysis!