Nearly half of people are put off by Chrome’s “not secure” warnings

In mid-2018, Google’s web browser Chrome made a small tweak to help users know how safe a specific site was. Specifically, it added a tag in the search bar flagging any site that had not updated to HTTPS as “not secure”.

Now, with the help of a new survey from the agency John Cabot, we are finally getting insight into how this little notification affects people’s perception of sites.

Based on a survey of 1,324 people in the UK, the survey finds that nearly half of all people respond negatively to sites which are flagged as “not secure” and many are less willing to give personal information to these sites.

According to the findings, 47% of respondents said they “knew roughly what the warning meant.” Similarly, 46% said they would not give their names or financial information to a site flagged as “non-secure”. Even more, 64% of that group say they would immediately leave non-secure sites.

The survey also found a few other fears and concerns when users come upon a non-secure site:

• Their device was exposed to a virus — 14%
  
• They had arrived on a fake version of the intended site — 12%
  
• The content was “unreliable and not fact-checked” — 9%
  
• Being signed up for spam email — 8.4%

Notably, the survey found that a brand’s existing perception appears to play a role in determining how people respond to a non-secure site. For example, retailer John Lewis experienced significantly less negative reactions to their site, despite being tagged as non-secure. This suggests widespread name recognition could potentially counter the warning.

Still, the findings of the survey show that a huge number of users are taking note any time they find a business website which has not implemented HTTPS encryption and many are even changing their behaviors based on this warning. If you haven’t updated your business site, these results suggest you could be losing up to 50% of your potential customers to something that is easy and affordable to implement.