Our Monthly Digital Doctor Feature sees John Donnelly from Digital Salon Group addressing key Digital related issues affecting the Salon Industry. This month, John highlights the decision by Google to effectively issue warnings to users visiting non-SSL compliant Websites.
In a move designed to increase the security of the internet as a whole, Google has decided that as of 18th July this year, they are going to start penalising all Websites that don’t have a valid SSL certificate. Basically, this means that anyone visiting a website via the Chrome platform (which make up over 50% of the world’s browsers) will be warned that the site is unsafe if that site doesn’t have a valid SSL certificate.
From July, Google will insert the words ‘not secure’ into the address line of your http website. Their intention is to change the colour of this to red in the near future. Obviously, this is bound to have consequences on site visitors with varying estimates on site abandonments but you can be assured that the figure will be high given the increased levels of fear and suspicion which people have with the internet. Either way, the only way to ensure the least amount of disruption to your website is by installing an SSL Certificate.
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. This link ensures that all data passed between the web server and browsers remain private and integral. Up to now, websites not involved in e-commerce transactions haven’t needed to have an SSL certificate. From July however, Google’s decision effectively means that every website needs one so that visitors can be assured that the site they are accessing is secure.
An SSL Certificate will change your address from http to https and will display the Green Secure Lock Logo in the top left hand corner.
Google also reward https websites by ranking them higher than the non-SSL http websites. It’s estimated that 45% of all google searches worldwide are for local business so any boost in your Salon’s rankings has to be a good thing.
The good news is that upgrading your website to SSL is neither time consuming nor expensive. The job does, however have to be handled by experts so the advice is to get on to your web developer our ourselves here in Digital Salon Group.
If you have any Digital related questions for John, you can email him directly at john@digitalsalongroup.com or phone 01 6853755
