Understanding Landing Page Security: HTTP and HTTPS

Learn the importance of the https:// URL prefix and its impact on your landing pages

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Accessing Secure Landing Pages

Lead Gen & CRM landing pages are secure. To access a secure version of your landing page with the https:// prefix, create or edit a landing page:

1. Click    Page Settings in the left panel.
2. Locate the Funnel URL–Secure field.

The URL in the Funnel URL–Secure field is the URL of the secure landing page.


 

If you have CNAME records set up, your new URL will be as follows: 
https://slug.company.com/slug

Without CNAME records set up, the URL will be as follows: 
https://pages.services/site.company.com/slug

Mixed Content

For websites, mixed content is the term given for when you load a page over a secured address and have assets with unsecured prefixes (http://) and secured prefixes (https://).

This means that when you have images or embedded videos that do not have a secure link, your landing pages will not be displayed correctly when using Lead Gen & CRM's https:// links. Most web browsers require—often via warning text—that visitors to the page grant permission to load unsecured content. Everything on the landing page must be secure in order for the secured address to fully work.

Any asset provided by Lead Gen & CRM —media center links, uploaded images, and the like—are, by default, secure. As such, unsecured content would be any non-Lead Gen & CRM link on your website. In Lead Gen & CRM's landing page editor, there will be a warning icon on mixed content in the    Page Settings feature by the problematic links.

As best practice, use only secured content. Again, Lead Gen & CRM provides means to display secure content. If you must bring in content from outside of Lead Gen & CRM or otherwise link to external content, ensure that the content is secure with https:// URLs. 
 

Website Security and Encryption

Encryption is the process in which data is converted from its present form into unrecognizable, encoded information. This way, encrypted messages can only be viewed by those authorized parties that have the way to remove the encryption from the data and see it in its original form. 

Encryption is important in today's online marketplace. It helps to protect personal information—banking and credit card information, for example—and keep it viewable only by authorized parties. 

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the protocol used on the Internet to format, distribute, communicate with, and respond to online content. HTTP uses hyperlinks to connect information and is displayed through website addresses with the prefix of http:// or a similar variant. Websites with the http:// prefix are not encrypted.



Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is the secured variant of HTTP. This URL has the https:// prefix. Secure, in this case, means that all communications between your browser and the website you are visiting are encrypted.



This encryption often uses the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Internet protocol, which is a protocol for encrypted communication between a web browser and a website.

Benefits of Secured Websites

Secured websites offer the visitor peace of mind in knowing that their information is being safeguarded from outside sources. As encrypted data is very difficult to decrypt and decode due to how the connection between browser and website is secure, it is improbable that the data being transmitted between the two could be captured, intercepted, or otherwise modified.

Security and encryption are now a focus of many web browsers. For example, in 2018, Google changed their policy for websites without the https:// prefix. 

In Google Chrome, these websites display a banner at the top of the page stating that the website is not secured and that content shared between your browser and the website are not encrypted. Websites lacking security are indexed by Google with search engine optimization (SEO). As such, unsecured websites' rankings will be impacted.

Questions?