This is something that you are most likely not aware of.
But because you and I are pen pals, you’ll be one step ahead of this upcoming change that will leave everyone else scratching their head while they try and guess what happened.
I’ll keep it simple:
When you are advertising your website, you tell the customers to “go to www. blah blah . com.au” . Right?
Or if you send someone the URL it might appear like this: http:// blah blah . com.au
What you might not know is that both of these links are not secure.
A secure link would have this at the start: https:// blah blah .com.au
The key ingredient here is the s in https.
Imagine if you were advertising your business on Facebook, and every time someone clicks on your Ad, you got charged (which is pretty much exactly how it works), and your campaign is going ok.
And then tomorrow, when someone clicks on your Ad and goes to your site, this person first sees a message that says: “WARNING – This Website is NOT Secure!”
What do you think that would do to your marketing results? (wipe out!)
As of July 1, this is what your customers will see if you do not have a secure domain. Whenever and however they go to your website, your customers will first see a warning that says something along those lines.
(To be honest, there is no set date apart from “early July 2018” – so I named it July 1 to help you cover your own backside early).
It’s all of our Web Browsers that are going to start giving these warnings. Your web browsers are:
- Google Chrome
- Safari
- Internet Explorer
- Firefox
- etc, etc.
(This is the thing you click on and open before you type in www.google.com – your web browser is the window itself).
Google Chrome is the big dog in this fight against nonsecure sites. 48.3% of Aussies on the internet use Google Chrome (source
http://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/all/australia
).
Chrome and Safari will be the first two to make this move and they account for 80% of all Aussies online.
Getting a warning on someones website before you had a chance to talk to them and trust them, might be a bit of a turn off. Therefore, getting your domain name secured BEFORE July 1, should be on your end of financial year to do list.
My company doesn’t sell secure sites, or “SSL certificates” as they are called. So there is nothing in this for me, besides knowing that I’ve at-least warned you about it.
80% of people getting a warning before visiting your site is going to be hurdle too high to jump without a SSL (a secure domain name).
I have recently used https://www.ssltrust.com.au/ to get Standard SSL for $11.20 a year for some of my domain names. I don’t get paid to say that, or if you get one through them.
This is who I use, but there are hundreds of others if you want to compare.
Some of these companies will also install your SSL Certificate for you for an additional fee of around $44 and up.
If you’ve advertised on Facebook or anywhere before, you will know that a small thing can ruin the entire campaign.
A “non secure” warning before from your customers web browser BEFORE getting to your website will be much bigger porblem than a small thing.
That’s it ! If you have a website, get your SSL certificates before July 1.
Talk soon,
Craig
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