If you think that you don’t need to secure your website because it doesn’t handle sensitive information, then you’d be wrong. Take 3 mins to read this article, there is so much more to consider.
Let’s take a quick look at the key reasons why you should. Four reasons why you need to secure your company website…
1) It protects your user’s privacy and security.
2) It protects the integrity of your website.
3) Futureproof your website.
4) Google will discourage customers from visiting your website by displaying a prominent ‘Not secure’ warning.
Regardless of whether your website is ecommerce or not, securing your site with HTTPS helps by encrypting user’s information during transmission, preventing their data being intercepted. Unfortunately, intruders actively seek this information and use it to build profiles of users particularly around their behaviours, preferences and intentions in order to identify them. If you use your website to drive enquiries and generate leads, then you need to secure it with HTTPS.
We all want to deal with businesses and websites that we know are genuine and trustworthy. HTTPS does not automatically mean that a website can be 100-percent trusted, as even a site with HTTPS can be malicious, so extra care is needed. If you are unsure about a website check out this advice from Which https://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/advice/how-to-spot-a-fake-fraudulent-or-scam-website
HTTPS can help to prevent malicious attacks and malware being added to sites that can steal sensitive user information. Making your site secure gives users assurance and allows them to browse and enquire via your website with confidence. It will also help to future proof your website, as many new web features available will only work with HTTPS.
It’s essential for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Google uses HTTPS as a factor in how they rank websites in their search engine result pages (SERPs) favouring sites that have HTTPS over HTTP. Google chrome makes it clear for users to tell if a site they are browsing is secure or not, simply by checking the website address in the top left-hand corner of the browser:
A site using HTTP now shows a warning that it is not secure:
A site that uses HTTPS displays a padlock to show it is secure:
All new websites should be built and set up with HTTPS, but it’s easy to also upgrade your HTTP site to HTTPS too. When moving a site from HTTP to HTTPS you are likely to see improvements in search engine rankings as Google prefers secure websites. So, HTTPS has business and customer benefits and it also pleases Google!
If you’d like any help or advice on this topic or have any other website or digital marketing needs, we’d love to hear from you via email: hello at teepeedigital.com or you can call us on 0161 401 1442.
If you’d like more details about what HTTPS is, here’s a useful article from Google Support: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6073543?hl=en.