The short answer is, yes. Adding one small letter can make all the difference when customers are searching for your company and interacting with your website. Beginning in October 2017, Chrome will show the “Not secure” warning in two additional situations: when users enter data on an HTTP page, and on all HTTP pages visited in Incognito mode.
So, what exactly does HTTPS mean?
Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is the secure version of HTTP, the protocol where data is sent between your browser and the website that you are connected to. The ‘S’ at the end of HTTPS stands for ‘Secure’. It means all communications between your browser and the website are encrypted. HTTPS is like HTTP but uses a secure socket layer (SSL) for security purposes. HTTPS is often used to protect data like online banking and online shopping order forms.
Why is it important to migrate from HTTP to HTTPS?
- HTTPS gives your users more security when browsing your website.
- Having HTTPS allows you to rank higher in Google searches.
- If you remain using HTTP, Google will begin indexing your site as “not secure”.
- According to research performed by GlobalSign, more than 80 percent of respondents would abandon a purchase if there was no HTTPS in use.
Google’s reasons to migrate:
- Encrypting the exchanged data to keep it secure from eavesdroppers. That means that while the user is browsing a website, nobody can “listen” to their conversations, track their activities across multiple pages or steal their information.
- Data integrity. Data cannot be modified or corrupted during transfer, intentionally or otherwise, without being detected.
- Proves that your users communicate with the intended website. It protects against man-in-the-middle attacks and builds user trust, which translates into other business benefits.
Is everyone making this switch?
As of June 2017, 21.7% of Alexa top 1,000,000 websites use HTTPS as default, 43.1% of the Internet’s 141,387 most popular websites have a secure implementation of HTTPS, and 45% of pages use HTTPS. These numbers will only continue to grow as the threat of cybersecurity increases and large internet-related companies, like Google, work to mitigate this issue.
Migrating from HTTP to HTTPS isn’t as easy as flicking a switch. Let our team help make this a smooth process for your website while enhancing your Google ranking, making your website more secure, and building genuine trust from your users.
To get started, contact us here!