Security is indeed everybody’s concern, especially with the growing number of digital transactions. Now, Google’s Chrome browser (v. 68) marking all HTTP sites as “Not secure” in address bar from July 2018. It means, now Google suggesting webmasters to migrate their websites from HTTP to HTTPS and avoid “Your connection to this site is not secure” warning in Chrome web browser.

SSL certificate must be installed on server to establish encrypted connection to secure data transmission between a website and its visitor’s browser. If your website URL starts with “https://“, then you can keep users’ data private during online transmission. You can keep your data safe against possible eavesdropping or Man-in-the-Middle attacks.

Currently, 81 out of Top 100 sites uses HTTPS connection by default until July 2018, research confirmed that more than 68% of Chrome traffic on Windows and Android platforms came from HTTPS sites. Chrome OS and Mac have already registered a commendable 78% coming from secured Chrome traffic.

Even user will see a red “not secure” label when they enter data on an HTTP web page in coming Chrome browser (v. 70). Hence, It is essential to understand the significance of migrating a website from HTTP to HTTPS by enlisting 6 key benefits as follows:

6 Advantages of Migrating site to HTTPS

1. Enhanced Web Security and Data Privacy

You can avail enhanced web security and data privacy by migrating site to HTTPS. Since all the HTTPS sites are encrypted, your online information can avail additional features of website Authenticity, data confidentiality and Protection.

Data sent over HTTPS connection, it cannot be modified or corrupted in transit. You can build user trust using HTTPS enabled site because when user browse “https://” website, then No one can access online data without user knowledge. This feature brings in dual benefits such as enhanced web security and data privacy. While you are protecting the information of your visitors, you as a website owner can attract the attention of numerous internet users through a protected.

2. Increase User’s Trust and Confidence

Chrome’s “Not secure” warning from July 2018, Website security using SSL have been taken seriously by website owners. While HTTPS websites help you to build customer confidence and trust. SSL certificate available in three main categories based on validation type such as Domain Validation (DV) SSL, Organization Validation (OV) SSL and Extended Validation (EV) SSL. DV SSL issued instantly after verification of domain name. While OV and EV SSL certificate requires full business authentication for issuance from Certificate Authority.

EV SSL certificate offers highest level of trust for online shoppers, because site is verified and organization is authenticated with strict validation method. Hence, phishing attacks can be avoided using an EV SSL certificates and Visitors can provide confidential information with a belief that no third party scams exist. User’s Trust will also enhanced because EV SSL secured website indicates following trust signs such as Green Address bar, Green Padlock icon, “https://” added in beginning of site’s URL, Organization name in address bar of Chrome browser. These trust indicators ensure users about site prevents data by encrypting all the information during online transmission.

3. Affect website’s Rankings on Google SERP

HTTPS helps to improve your site’s ranking in Google search engine results. SSL certificates are required to convert site from HTTP to HTTPS and add “https://” next to the site URL. If you don’t have SSL certificate on your server, then your website is on HTTP only. Google officially announced that HTTPS as ranking signal in order to provide more secure and accurate results.

However, you can obtain either free or paid SSL certificate from trust and reliable certificate provider or Certificate Authority. Free SSL certificates are issued for a limited period of validity (usually 90 days) whereas, Paid SSL certificates are issued with 1 or 2 years validity option from either CA trusted SSL re-seller or reliable Certificate Authorities (CAs) like Comodo, RapidSSL, Thawte, GeoTrust etc.

SSL certificates comes secure site seal from CA with a warranty. Thus, We can say SSL certificate affect Google search rankings. If your site is not secured with SSL certificate, then you might loose your organic traffic from Google search engine result pages. With “HTTPS as a ranking signal” all website owners have motivated to switch sites from HTTP to HTTPS.

4. Avoid “Not secure” warning in Chrome web browser

Below is the pictorial representation of the warning signal that can marked on address bar when user visit HTTP sites after July 2018.

As seen in image, Google’s Chrome warn users of “Not secure” pages because Google constantly working to provide safe browsing experience to user as they browse through the web.

HTTP site doesn’t provide encrypted connection, this means all your information is visible during online transmission and they can modify your content while sending to the site. In result, you can lose your web traffic as well as user’s trust. So, if you are looking to increase number of visitors, it is time you migrate your HTTP site to HTTPS.

5. Accurate Website’s Referral Traffic

If you are using Google Analytics to track your website’s referral traffic, then HTTP to HTTPS migration is mandatory. A web traffic from an HTTPS website to an HTTP site is not visible under referral traffic, and considered as direct traffic. The encrypted data gets redirected from the server and is passed on to HTTPS connection.

All those HTTP website deal with confidential and financial information and collects sensitive data from users to log on their sites such as a username, password etc.. If the login credentials are not encrypted (as in the case of a HTTP site), all the online communication can easily be accessible by network sniffers.

6. Increased Conversion Rates

Even though a layman does not understand the technicalities concerning secured connections, internet users of today are indeed the well-informed lot. They are educated enough to know that they can safely share their personal information on a secured HTTPS site.

Now, user can see site as “Secure” label for all HTTPS sites, which allows a significant rise in conversion rates for HTTPS enabled website as observed. Even Google will begin to show red “Not secure” warning, when user enters a data on HTTP sites, which may attract the attention of a larger customer base. Hence, HTTP to HTTPS migration will eventually lead to a considerable rise in conversion rates.

Closing Thoughts

Considering all the 6 key benefits of moving site from HTTP to the secured HTTPS connection for long term, it comes as the prime duty of every website owner to establish secure connection. Even you can draw the attention of visitors to your SSL secured website and reap all the above mentioned rewards of having HTTPS secure connection for the website. So, I can conclude that HTTP to HTTPS migration is recommended for every online business website owners, if they concerned cyber-security as a priority.