Maybe you’ve had someone tell you recently that you need to have HTTPS on your website and you stared blankly back at them trying to figure out exactly what that means without asking a dumb question. Well, HTTPS is a secure, encrypted site. When you go to YouTube, amazon, twitter, etc etc, you likely have noticed that there is a little green padlock in your address bar and maybe even the words: SECURE. That means any information that you submit via forms on the site (like a credit card number) will be encrypted before its transmitted through the site. Meaning that, in theory, the information should be free from being intercepted and used by a criminal.
HTTPS or SSL (Secure socket Layer) simply means you’re protecting the data that people provide to your site. And that’s usually been only needed for ecommerce sites, ticketing sites, or any site that requires you provide private information. Lately however, Google has been making a push for a secure internet and that means that they expect all sites to be secure. There’s been talk of google ranking secure sites higher than their non-secure competitors and while that may not be happening now, it likely will happen in the future.
The first sign of this “securing the internet” directive is a new version of Google Chrome coming in July that will mark every HTTP site as “Not Secure.”
Think about the consequence of having “NOT SECURE” on the top of your browser when a visitor considers filling out a form or viewing ticket prices.
Do you need a SSL/HTTPS on your site?
I Sell tickets or Use an Iframe to Sell Tickets on My site.
If you are selling tickets or even just using an Iframe or code snippet to sell tickets then ABSOLUTELY You need to have HTTPS on your site. Even if you aren’t collecting customer data directly you should do what you can to make your customer feel as secure as possible during the ticket buying process.
I Just have a Haunted House website that I don’t sell tickets on.
If you’re not selling tickets directly from your site in any way then technically you’re safe to not have a HTTPS. However, with the way things are heading regarding customer tracking, SEO ranking and site hacking, it just makes sense to just do it.
We’re an Escape Room Website, Do we need it?
Without a doubt you need HTTPS on your site. Most escape room sites are using an iframe to sell tickets using one of the major booking services such as Bookify or Bookeo. Even though you’re not collecting this data on your site, you need to provide a secure appearance for your customer.
Escape Rooms also have a lot of corporate clients that will access your site using a corporate intranet connection at the office. Most of those corporate networks block any site that isn’t HTTPS. That means you miss out on corporate clients that might have booked a room with you!
BOTTOM LINE: YES!
The Reality is that everything is moving toward HTTPS and you shouldn’t want to be late to that party. The good news is the process is pretty painless and fairly easy to do. Best of all Rogues Hollow can do it all for you! If you’re interested in Securing your website contact us today at 614-408-3137 or message us here.
