Are you a website owner and absolutely shaken by the thought of your website getting hacked into? 

Are you confused about the concept of a secure website?

Do you want to go ahead with a secure website but are still unsure whether you would do the right thing by doing so? 

Well, if your answer to all these questions is a yes or at least to one of these questions is a yes, then this article might be just the saver you need. 

Most people are normally confused about the whole process of securing their website and often think that it’s okay to leave it unsecured. 

A few years ago, that would’ve been still okay, but now, Google emphasises on maintaining a secure website as most of the official and information-rich processes have shifted online.

But before we cover why you need to have a secure website, let’s first take a look and understand – what a secure website is all about…

What Is A “SECURE WEBSITE”? 

A secure website is one that uses something called as a Secure Socket Locker or Layer, more widely known as a SSL. This is basically a technology that sets up a protected connection between the server and your web browser.

Have you seen “https” at the beginning of the website URLs that you normally surf? 

That’s a secure website. The “s” in “http” stands for secure, that signals to the web browser as well as to the internet user to recognise that the website is a protected one. 

If you haven’t been checking whether the websites that you visit are secure, then it’s always recommended to check for “https” before you click, although Google Chrome (and many more browsers these days) might anyway send you an alert. 

In simple terms, SSL ensures that the information shared between your web browser and the website that you’re exploring is absolutely protected from all hackers out there on the world wide web. 

Why Keep A SECURE WEBSITE? 

Now that you know what a secure website is, it’s not only important to know how to recognise one, but it is also imperative to learn and understand why you need to have a secure website. Let’s have a look –

Need To Have A SECURE WEBSITE For Google’s Sake

As mentioned earlier, Google recognises a secure website. 

When Google’s Developers began the #httpseverywhere campaign, they had hinted that there might be a small benefit associated to the need of keeping the websites secure. The benefit was that, these secure websites would be ranked better or higher. 

This is because Google prefers to lead it’s users to secure connections and websites in order to avoid any complications and in order to prevent any hacking of the user accounts. 

Browsers Recognise SECURE WEBSITES As Protected

If you have visited a website that’s not secure, then you must’ve received a warning stating “this site is not secure, do you still want to go ahead?” Well, this is your alert. This means that if you do go ahead with the connection, you won’t be protected and there could be a possibility that your data would be misused there. 

Most browsers such as Google Chrome also have a regular checking mechanism that deems certain websites as not secure.  

If you’re accessing any protected website, browsers like Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox now put up the symbol of a lock to indicate that the site you are exploring is protected. 

SECURE WEBSITE Respects Data Privacy

Well, if you’re running an ecommerce website, it’s absolutely crucial for you to secure your website for your users!

Today, users are also very well informed and ascertain if a site that they are visiting is a secure site or not. This is more so after Google Chrome has stepped this up a notch by going ahead and recognising some sites as “not secure.”

You especially don’t want to have an unsecured website with Chrome being the leading web browser with a market share of  64.92%.   

By securing your website, you’re ensuring that not only is the users data well protected but also that your site is well respected. 

SECURE WEBSITE Means No Website Hacker

If you’re an (ecommerce) website owner or even just an user, you may in all likelihood have heard or have read about certain website’s being hacked and being inflected with malware.  

Here, the malware which is not a good software enters the website and steals data. So in such a scenario, your customers will be redirected to a site with malicious software. 

Plus, the number of cyber security hacks have increased these days, much more than what it was during the pre pandemic days. According to Cision PR Newswire, the FBI reported that the number of complaints about cyber attacks and hacks have risen up to 4000 a day. 

Now, that’s a nightmare. And if you want to save your business and your users from this nightmare, you know what best to do. 

Thinking about going ahead with getting an SSL Certificate for your website but unsure how to do so? Read all the important details about this here. 

Benefits Of A SECURE WEBSITE

Now for the good part. The benefits. 

There are a number of benefits in using a secure website and you should know these benefits if you’re planning on launching or maintaining a website. 

SECURE WEBSITE Means Secured Customer Trust

Yes, you read that right! When your website is secure, the customers are willing to put in their trust and their confidence in your website.

As a matter of fact, 93.2% of Chrome users spend their browsing time on the secure websites. 

In this world of humungous unsecured websites and malware, your customers come and visit your website only because that feel that you care about their data and privacy too. 

SECURE WEBSITE Can Get You Authenticated

If you’re securing your website, you’ll receive something called as a “SSL Certificate.” This certificate helps you verify the information you receive on your website. 

Moreover, your visitor and customers too can see the same, since online trust issues can otherwise be a real barrier. This certificate substantiates the fact that the website is well authenticated.

SECURE WEBSITE Can Improve Your SEO

As a business, needless to say, you need to care about SEO and ranking of your website a lot more. 

If you expect that you can have an unsecured website and still rank higher than a secured website, you need to revisit the facts. 

As discussed earlier, Google wants to lead and show its users only those sites that are trustworthy in every aspect, Google, essentially focuses on security and data privacy. 

This means that if your website, however well designed, is not secured, you won’t rank higher and you might just miss out on opportunities of attracting new visitors and customers. 

Now, you don’t want that, do you?  

Avoid Lawsuits With A SECURE WEBSITE

With a secure website at your disposal, any unwanted breach of security can be avoided because your customer’s information is always well protected. A secure website encrypts your customer’s information. 

To put it simply, when the hackers who by any chance get hold of your data, the information shared won’t be clear to them because they’ll be only reading encrypted and scrambled data. 

So in this way, you’ve assured your customer that you’ve done everything in your right to keep their information private. 

Conclusion For A SECURE WEBSITE

Thus, keeping and maintaining a secure website would be extremely beneficial for you and for your business to flourish.

A secure website would get you a lot more customers as a result of your data protection system and policy being in place. This also assures the clients of your website. This is even when the website ownership is kept transparent, though it is always best to keep the ownership private, (as far as possible) for security reasons.

On the other hand, having and running an unsecured website might pose security risks to your business and also to your clients and would expose you to many other issues which otherwise should have been easily  avoided. 

What do you think about a secure website? Would you visit an unsecured website knowing very well that it poses a risk to your privacy and data?