Use HTTPS for your landing pages or kill your conversion rate.
The number of website enquiries you get is going to fall off a cliff after *24th of October 2017 if your website doesn't use HTTPS.
HTTPS is the secure website protocol. After the *24th of October, Google Chrome will warn people that web pages with forms are insecure unless they’re served over HTTPS. About half of the internet uses Google Chrome. That’s a lot of potential customers to scare away.
The default setting for most websites is the insecure HTTP protocol. You have to specifically enable HTTPS.
Here's how you check if it has been enabled for your site.
- Go to your website's home page.
- Copy the URL from the browser address bar.
- Paste it anywhere that will let you change it - Word will do.
- If the URL starts with HTTPS you’re in the clear, no further action required. Otherwise change the HTTP part of the address to HTTPS and paste it into the address bar of your web browser.
- Reload the page. If your site doesn't load right away, or if you see warnings then your site doesn't work on HTTPS.
You need to install a SSL certificate on your web server to make HTTPS work. A certificate costs anything from free to several hundred dollars a year. The installation process ranges in complexity from one-click-and-you're-done to gouge-your-eyes-out-in-frustration - depending on who hosts your site.
My experience has always been on the frustrating end of the scale. It's painful for one site. I had to do a couple of hundred. Each of the lead generation sites my business runs had to have a certificate.
I was expecting three weeks of manual, error-prone work. It turns out that it was (mostly) a walk in the park thanks to a service called Let's Encrypt.
Let's Encrypt has turned the certificate industry upside down. Their certificates are free and you can install them programatically. As you can imagine, those are very attractive features when you have more than a handful of sites.
It took some work to move the sites to a web host that offers Let's Encrypt. After that it was easy. I hired my youngest son to click the 'Add SSL' button for each site. It took him an hour.
If you’re considering this, here’s a forum thread with a long list of hosting providers that offer Let's Encrypt certificates.
https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/web-hosting-who-support-lets-encrypt/6920
* Chrome 62 is/was scheduled for release on the 24th. It may be released sooner.
I offer 1-to-1 mentoring and consulting. You’ll get help, advice, support and answers without having to commit to a long-term contract. Details here.
Related articles
How I improve conversion rate for long booking forms Complex lead intake or booking forms offer opportunities for improving conversion rates. Here are a few...
How I track WhatsApp conversations as conversions in Google Ads At the time of writing Google has no way of tracking WhatsApp leads as conversions. I've used a couple of work arounds to solve this.
How to get more phone call leads. Most businesses who advertise online to get leads struggle to contact people who filled in an enquiry form. One way to improve this is to get leads to call you.
Will using technical terms and industry jargon on a landing page improve conversion rate? Landing pages have to be written for both the expert and non-technical user because you get both expert and non-technical visitors. Here's how to do that.
Improve conversion rates with visitor-focussed headlines High-converting headlines are about what the visitor cares for, not about the characteristics of the business. Here's how to check your headline for visitor focus.
6 Critical Mistakes You're Making with Your Landing Page Amy Hoy wrote a brilliant article titled 6 Critical Mistakes You're Making with Your Landing Page. She makes a really interesting observation which resonated with me: Landing page design is actually a usability exercise.
CAPTCHA is like putting barbed wire in front of your shop Don't make it difficult for your customers to contact you. Businesses with the smoothest processes will attract (and keep) the best customers.
Do long enquiry forms get more qualified leads? If your enquiry form asks for much more than contact details you're losing qualified sales leads. Read on to learn why...
Honest conversion tracking when you've got live chat, click to call and a form I took on an account with no useful conversion data. Here's how I started tracking calls, forms and live chat accurately.
How I got landing page load time down from 0.8 seconds to 0.2 seconds. Here’s a quick tip for improving landing page speed. As you know, nobody likes a slow website. Load speed is strongly correlated with the conversion rate: Fast website = more leads.
How long should your landing page be? How long should your landing page be? The answer isn't a number.
How to craft high-converting headlines, even if you have the copywriting skills of a turnip. If you’re anything like me, starting is the hardest part of writing. It's like I'm staring at the screen waiting for someone to unblock the idea pipe. That struggle is over.
How to improve landing page experience. Improving page speed helps improve landing page experience. Google's guidance is broad, not specific. That makes it hard to know what to do. Google does provide one specific set of instructions, following these will improve landing page experience and boost conversion rates.
I’m paying for clicks but I'm not getting enough leads. Read on to learn how your website could be sabotaging your advertising. And, what you can do to get more leads from your the clicks you've already paid for.
Improve website conversion rates with autocomplete. Here's a small tweak to the contact form on your website that'll make it easier for people to complete it. Adding autocomplete to your form fields is one of those 1% kaizen improvements. They all add up.
Landing pages: Click-to-call or contact form? You get the highest conversion rates from landing pages that concentrate on convincing visitors to do just one thing. Offer visitors too many choices and they bounce. But what if there are two equally good things your visitor could do?
We read websites like we did 100 years ago Even though the internet is infinitely more ubiquitous now. Even though we've had a generation grow up with Google. Even though 2-year olds have iPads . The way people read websites hasn't changed...
What's your landing page's first job? It’s not to convince someone to buy from you, establish trust, build your brand or educate your customer. Those things are important but they're not the first job. The first job is ...
Length is a liability; value per page is an asset. This is a quote from Write Useful Books by Rob Fitzpatrick. His advice is perfect for lead-generation landing pages.
How to improve landing page conversion rates by increasing visitor motivation Here's how I doubled the conversion rate on some Google Ads lead generation landing pages by improving visitor's motivation.