Google Chrome is releasing an update in July that will mark websites as ‘Not Secure’ if the site is not using SSL (HTTPS). This warning to users could scare them away from the website and cause them not to purchase, sign up or come back to the site. If you have not already done so we highly recommend you move your website over to HTTPS from HTTP as soon as possible.
There are multiple ways to move over to HTTPS one of the easiest ways is to use Cloudflare’s free SSL options. Another free option is to install an SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt although this is a little more technical to setup, Chrome is actually a sponsor of Let’s Encrypt as well.
Once your site has an SSL certificate setup and you are using HTTPS for your website (make sure if you rely on traffic from SEO you do this correctly), you should then look at changing any internal and external links on your website over to HTTPS, whilst having external HTTP links on your site wont cause the ‘Not Secure’ message to appear (unless you are loading assets for example images or tracking pixels over HTTP, then it will display Not Secure or Mixed Content warnings), it will still improve the user experience and mean a user wont see the ‘Not Secure’ message, if for example they clicked an affiliate link.
Affiliates – Switching Your Affiliate Links to HTTPS
For WOW TRK Affiliates that are using our standard t.wowtrk.com domain name for their affiliate links its extremely easy to move these over to HTTPS. All Affiliates need to do is update any link that is http://t.wowtrk.com to https://t.wowtrk.com
The few affiliates that are not actually on our standard tracking domain name, please get in touch with us to discuss options for moving your traffic links to HTTPS, as these may not support HTTPS.
Advertisers – Switching Your Tracking Code to HTTPS
For WOW TRK Advertisers that are using tracking pixels on their website it is extremely important these are updated to HTTPS tracking pixels (if your site uses HTTPS or you plan to move over to HTTPS) as users may see a ‘Mixed Content’ or a ‘Not Secure’ message, if not changed over. Note, you can’t simply edit the code to change this to HTTPS you must speak to your account manager first to change the tracking protocol on your offers to HTTPS and they will then provide you with the new tracking code.
If you are using postback/S2S for tracking even though this is using HTTP you should be loading this server side not on the actual website, if you are doing this correctly this wont need to be switched over to HTTPS.
We hope you find the information above useful if you need any help with moving over to HTTPS don’t hesitate to get in touch with your account manager or our customer support team.
