There are many technological factors that can affect your online art sales. One of the most important and least understood is website security. Website security is a requirement if you plan on selling anything online, like art. For example, without it you can't collect credit card information online. Website security also helps encourage people to buy from you. We all buy goods and services online these days, and when we do we all look for that little green lock in the top left corner of our browser's address bar. It's a symbol of confidence and trust that makes it easier for us to click on that Buy Now button.
It used to be that you only had to worry about website security when you were trying to sell something online. That's no longer the case thanks to a couple of pretty important changes that Google has made over the last few years.
One of these was a change to Google's search algorithm that increases search rankings for websites that use a security feature called Secure Sockets Layer (or SSL for short). SSL is a technology that's used to encrypt website traffic between your browser and a computer hosting a website. It prevents any hackers from being able to see this traffic and prevents them from stealing any of your personal data. So if your website doesn't use SSL, your search engine rankings will suffer.
The other change that Google made was to its popular Chrome browser. Google introduced new status indicators in Chrome's web address bar. Websites that use SSL get that reassuring green lock icon that we mentioned earlier, but sites that don't use SSL will now get a warning indicator icon with an exclamation point. So if you don't have SSL the warning indicator may spook some of your visitors.
Here are two examples of how the indicators work. The first is a FASO website from BoldBrush Signature Artist Jennifer McChristian. It shows what the status indicator looks like for an artist website that is secured with SSL.
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