How Does HTTPS Work and Can It Improve the Profitability of Your Campaigns

What are the best practices for online advertising? If woken up and asked in the middle of the night, for sure you could easily list a good deal of them. Unique content and good offer, the effort put in optimization and using different ad formats, a catchy call-to-action and relevant targeting…

Yes, it all matters – but that’s not all.

Nowadays, in our cyber world, you also need to show your customer that you are truly reliable and willing to protect him and his data. After all, you’re his host on your site, which makes you the person who needs to earn his trust. Without a feeling of security, many of your visitors will never become your actual customers.

Want to discover one simple trick to increase the performance of your marketing actions, be more visible, attractive, trustworthy and eventually successful?

You don’t need to click anywhere to find out, just stay with me on this one.

Firstly, let’s imagine a scenario: you are about to enter a shop, willing to buy some goods. Either you were in real need for them or were just window-shopping, but then something specifically caught your attention and now you stuck in “Shut up and take my money” mode. Just can’t wait to wear it or start using it…

Need a different example? Please, be my guest: you’re in the office, willing to complete the formalities by leaving some of your personal data to the office worker. You’ve done it many times in the past, you perfectly know how to do it, it’s just matter of a few seconds, just a few boxes to fill in…

...But once you’re in, your Spider-Sense tingle: Something’s wrong! You’re not safe!

How does it affect your behavior? Are you encouraged to finish your task? Take out your wallet, leave your personal data, and just enjoy your purchase? Not really I imagine. Neither is your potential lead, who is visiting your landing page.

First things first – how to understand protocols and their versions?

HTTP vs HTTPS – what’s the difference?

HTTP – HyperText Transfer Protocol – is the technical way of how exactly a browser connects to websites. What makes a big difference and advantage, for HTTPS, is that this version of the protocol uses encryption for its connection. In other words: the bridge which links a user to the website is safe from being compromised or affected by 3rd parties, like cybercriminals, hackers or any other organizations, which would like to take advantage of you and steal your data.

Nowadays, it’s super easy to tell if your connection to a website is secure or not – you can basically do this just by checking out the protocol before the URL address. If you see HTTPS you’re good to go, but if there’s HTTP, that should set off alarm bells. Most browsers also have an icon that indicates a secure connection — for example, Chrome and Safari display a green or silver padlock icon, depending on the level of encryption.

SSL and TLS – lock the door!

While HTTP is a well-known protocol used globally by the World Wide Web to define how messages are formatted and transmitted, the ‘S’ at the end of HTTPS version stands for ‘Secure’. What makes this protocol safe for data transit is the additional layer of encryption, which comes along with either SSL or TLS connections.
Both have the same goal and work pretty much comparably but if SSL gives your virtual room a solid lock on the door, then TLS would make the same door armored. From a functionality point of view, SSL and TLS are extremely similar and serve the same purpose – they encrypt the data in transit between servers. While SSL (Secure Socket Layer) has been already present on the market for a while, TLS (Transport Layer Security) is the new and even more secure successor to the previous version of encrypted protocol. The difference between them is rather subtle and technical. Still, their common goal is to keep users’ information safe by encrypting the data in the first place.

How the protocol on your website can directly affect your business?

Should I stay or should I go?

The Song at the top of each internet user’s daily playlist. Especially now, since June 2018 internet browsers automatically alarm our visitor once he is about to land on potential threatening virtual territory. Yes, a website which is not secured with HTTPS is treated automatically as a potential threat, where someone can attack user by stealing his data or infiltrate him and his device. I’m talking all the people who were just about to land on your page but now they are alarmed by their browser’s extremely unappealing warning. As a result:

1. They are more concerned for their own cyber safety than getting to know more about any content or the specific offer on the website in front of their eyes.
2. They’re being encouraged to search for some other (safer) place – for sure your competition will take advantage of it. As for you, a higher bounce rate automatically means lower chances of converting.

Visibility – (How) do they see you?

Internet users are more and more aware of the dangers of data leaks and all the topics around cyber-security, but the main browsers also keep tabs on the sites you visit and pop up an alert when your destination is not safe. As we can learn from the Google Transparency and Safety Report, in just last few years, the percentage of encrypted sites across Google and its products on the net has grown from about 50% in 2015 up to 90% in 2019. The message about the importance of security on the net for Google is crystal clear, so it’s not really a surprise that it also affects the SEO rank of your site online. If two websites have equally ranked content, but one of them is not secured with HTTPS – well, guess which one will rank higher in search results and get more visitors.

Protect yourself at all times

We already know a lot about the reasons to protect visitors and their data on your landing page in order to make them stay with you. But how about protecting your own business? With HTTPS, your site is not only more trustworthy but also less likely to be the target of hacker’s attacks. What’s even more, it protects both sides (your customer as well as you as an online retailer) from identity fraud and compliance of transactions. Packets of data from your website can no longer be intercepted or decoded. It means that hacker can not monitor what sort of action is being taken inside your site and is not able to trick your user, collect his data or force him to download some malicious elements. This can be a real game-changer for you and your customer, saving a lot of potential trouble for both sides and bringing you a greater return on investment.

High time to get one!

 

If you want your visitor to feel safe and sound, an encrypted protocol already is a must have for you.

It ensures that transfer of any sensitive data between user browser and website server is safe, so nothing gonna fall into the wrong hands, no matter if a visitor leaves credit card information, some personal contact info or even private login details.

Moving forward from technical complexity to the business outcome, HTTPS is designed to protect not only the privacy and security of the users online but also the integrity and authenticity of your website and its whole content. As an owner you also benefit from this matter – if visitors feel safe on your website they’re more likely to stay and become your customers, converting on your offers.

Luckily, in Voluum you not only get a dedicated domain, which is a unique domain assigned to your account and provided by us only for your usage but also it just takes 4 clicks in order to set the encryption connection by turning on HTTPS for it.

You don’t know how to do it? Well, you don’t have to – we do it all on our side. You don’t want to pay for it? Say no more – we enable SSL protocol for your domain for free. You have more Custom domains hosted by you and would like them all to be secured? Voluum will do it for you, depending on your plan you can decide how many SSL protocols you would like to have. Get safe and don’t miss the chance to gain the trust of your website’s visitors and boost your sales thanks to the benefits that come along with using secure protocol.