The Benefits of Migrating to HTTPS

The Benefits of Migrating to HTTPS

Sometimes it can be difficult to keep up with all the changes in social media and technology. Businesses have to keep a sharp eye when it comes to connecting with their clientele. When you think you’ve up to speed, something new comes along. Your website is one of the most important components of your business. It contains all the information about your company (at least it should) and gives others the opportunity to find you online so that you can increase sales. Let’s think about the technical aspects of your website for a moment. Websites always start with those renowned four letters: HTTP. We’re going to give you all the details about HTTP and tell you why migrating to HTTPS is more beneficial to you and your customers.

What are HTTP and HTTPS?

Let’s get back to those four letters. HTTP stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol and PC Mag defines it as, “the communications protocol used to connect to Web servers on the Internet or on a local network (intranet).” This is different from HTTPS, which stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure, because the letter ‘S’ means additional security, as well as various other benefits.

HTTPS and SEO

We all know that Google is always updating their complex algorithms and making consistent changes to enhance the user experience. (We’ve been blogging about some of these changes and how they can affect SEO). One of the benefits of migrating to HTTPS is to gain a slight ranking boost on Google. They note in their blog that they’re going to give us some time before they give HTTPS a stronger ranking affect, but there are no decisions set in stone regarding the switch. As with all the technological changes, Social Spice always recommends staying ahead of the game to engineer influence online. A partial ranking boost is only one of the benefits of migrating to HTTPS. In fact, we don’t have any reasons as to why you shouldn’t make the switch.

Security, Performance, and Trust

That ‘S’ at the end of HTTPS adds extra layers of security to your website. Information on your site should be encrypted regardless of what that information is. Your usernames and passwords are important information as well as the content on your webpages – you should keep them secure and let your users know that their information will be protected.

It’s especially important to encrypt information if you operate an e-commerce business and sell products that require people to enter their credit card number or personal information. Will your clients want to enter their info on a website that is not secure? You could potentially drive away business for not migrating your site. The goal is to create trust between you and the visitors on your website.

They’ll be able to tell if your website does not use HTTPS because it will look slightly different than HTTP. This difference is noted by green text as well as a green padlock in front of “https://” in your address bar. Do you think your customers will want to put their information into a website that doesn’t have that padlock? Probably not, especially since users will know when they are on what is called a “secure server.”

HTTPS also gives your website a speed boost and faster web loading is always beneficial. Your website visitors could also turn away from your website if it takes longer to load than they’d like.

Get in touch with us to enhance your website so we can help you improve user experience. We want to give you the tools you need to demonstrate to your clients that you’re the experts and they should do business with you.