Visitors may be leaving your site before they even get started. But there’s an easy fix… SSL
Some of you may have already experienced this. You go to a website you’ve been visiting for years and suddenly, your browser is telling you that it isn’t secure. What?!? What happened? Hackers? Virus? The flu?
Possible but no, probably not. While the “not secure” warning does not indicate that your site is infected with malware, it does tell you that the page doesn’t have a secure connection. In the past, this was really only necessary or useful if you were using that very page to send or receive encrypted data. But recent browser updates across the board are now indicating a page as non-secure regardless of the function it performs.
Note: If you are using payment processors (i.e Paypal) or online email campaign management tools (i.e. Aweber, Constant Contact), the pages or plugins they provide to collect data are almost always secured on their end. So your visitors would not see a warning on those pages.
As the owner of website, this can get be a bit worrisome. You don’t want your customers being scared away from your site before they even get to your products or services. Fortunately, the solution is an easy one. You need to get an SSL certificate and activate it on your site.
Not only will this help retain your visitors but Goggle and other search engines are also favoring SSL secure sites over non-SSL secure sites in their search results. So adding SSL certificates will allow you to maintain your standings in the search engines.
Depending on where you host your website, there may or may not be a cost involved in acquiring an SSL certificate. Some hosting companies, like Host Gator, the current primary provider for my customers, is now providing free SSL certs with every new hosting account. Existing accounts are also being updated. (This is an ongoing process so your site may or may not have already been updated with the certificate. Continue reading for instructions on how to find out.) If you are not hosted with Host Gator, you’ll need to check with your hosting company to find out if they offer SSL certificates and can provide you with installation and setup services.
I’ll go more into the benefits of SSL certificates in a future article as well as some of the “gotchas” you may encounter setting these up on your site. Stay tuned for more information…
Have an SSL story to tell? Share it below. We’d love to hear about some of the trials and successes you’ve had.
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