Starting in October 2017, Google Chrome will begin to display a “NOT SECURE” warning whenever a user enters text on a form located on an HTTP page. This warning is designed to alert website visitors that your website is not running on the HTTPS protocol.
Google has made it apparent that this is only the first step of their long term plan to promote website security.
Recently, Google has been sending out emails about the transition to a secure web. If you have your website in Google Search Console (which if you don’t you are totally missing out, but that’s a completely different story), you would have recently received an email entitled “Chrome will show security warnings on http://[yoursite.com]”. Also included in this email is the sentence “The new warning is part of a long term plan to mark all pages served over HTTP as “not secure”.
What this means is, there is no turning back. You are advised to make your website HTTPS compliant as soon as possible to prevent the future negative search results that are imminent in the future. Since this is so important, most eCommerce platforms have created the ability to secure your website with the HTTPS protocol well in advance of the October release date. Yahoo’s Aabaco Small Business is no different, they have announced that within the next few weeks, a free security certificate will be available for all merchants.
The problem is that you need to first make sure that your website is ready to go HTTPS. Any script, image, or reference to another website that is not HTTPS will cause your security certificate to fail.
Here at Your Store Wizards, we’ve been hard at work over the past few weeks to create a tool that will allow you to find out if your site will work with the new SSL release. Feel free to use our free tool to help you prepare your website for the release of HTTPS. We also offer a service to do the conversion for you should you choose to not do it yourself, but we are always here for you should you have questions or need our assistance. Test your website for free by clicking here.