Shape Up and Lock Down Your Sites!

After fielding a number of question this year about site security, alongside general strategic recommendations, Affino has just two areas we want everyone to focus on this year:

#1 - Make Everything HTTPS

It Used to be the case that only Login, Registration, Checkout and User Account Screens were secured with SSL Encryption. The current advice though is to apply SSL to the entirety of your site - every page.

Just as search engines started to give priority to responsive design sites, we believe that similar criteria will soon be employed for HTTPS vs HTTP (some say this is already happening). Yet that is the least of the reasons for why you would want to encrypt every page. Sure it adds to your hosting overheads a touch, and there may be just the tiniest impact on page upload speeds, but it is totally worth it for ensuring that your site is as safe as possible from hackers, JavaScript injections / cross-site scripting, and other forms of digital exploitation. You get additional peace of mind, and so do your customers when they see the HTTPS in their browser and the active certificate notices.

#2 - Go Responsive

We’ve been going on about this for the best part of 3 years now, and yes our own responsive site is coming along nicely, it’s just that we’re inundated with other more pressing work at the moment, although we do hope to go live with our new site near as possible to the start of September.

We all know that that the major search engines are penalising non-responsive sites, and that if you care about SEO, then responsive is something that has to be done. Also if you wish to have an ongoing dialogue with your customers, you had better be targeting them via the only device that is always within reach. For some, the solution is to roll out Native Apps, but that requires a whole lot more work, and you still don’t guarantee that your customers will necessarily download your App. What you can guarantee is that nearly everyone now has a smartphone, with a browser - this same device is being checked an average of 100 times per day (Pew Research Group). Irrespective of whether your customers mostly buy or work from their desktops, there will be times during their working days, and away from their desks, when they will want to connect via their mobile devices, so you better provide them with that option or they may seek better service elsewhere.

Both of the above will have a really big impact on your business this year, we entourage you to contact your account managers at the earliest opportunity to at least start down a path of discovery and consultation - the success of your business will likely depend on it ...