SSL is the backbone of our secure Internet and it protects your sensitive information as it travels across the world's computer networks. SSL is essential for protecting your website, even if it doesn't handle sensitive information like credit cards. It provides privacy, critical security and data integrity for both your websites and your users' personal information.

The primary reason why SSL is used is to keep sensitive information sent across the Internet encrypted so that only the intended recipient can understand it. This is important because the information you send on the Internet is passed from computer to computer to get to the destination server. Any computer in between you and the server can see your credit card numbers, usernames and passwords, and other sensitive information if it is not encrypted with an SSL certificate. When an SSL certificate is used, the information becomes unreadable to everyone except for the server you are sending the information to. This protects it from hackers and identity thieves.

In addition to encryption, a proper SSL certificate also provides authentication. This means you can be sure that you are sending information to the right server and not to an imposter trying to steal your information. Why is this important? The nature of the Internet means that your customers will often be sending information through several computers. Any of these computers could pretend to be your website and trick your users into sending them personal information.  It is only possible to avoid this by using a proper Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), and getting an SSL Certificate from a trusted SSL provider.

Why are SSL providers important?
Trusted SSL providers will only issue an SSL certificate to a verified company that has gone through several identity checks. Certain types of SSL certificates, like EV SSL Certificates, require more validation than others. How do you know if an SSL provider is trusted? You can use our SSL Wizard to compare SSL providers that are included in most web browsers. Web browser manufactures verify that SSL providers are following specific practices and have been audited by a third-party using a standard such as WebTrust.

Web browsers give visual cues, such as a lock icon or a green bar, to make sure visitors know when their connection is secured. This means that they will trust your website more when they see these cues and will be more likely to buy from you. SSL providers will also give you a trust seal that instills more trust in your customers.

HTTPS also protects against phishing attacks. A phishing email is an email sent by a criminal who tries to impersonate your website. The email usually includes a link to their own website or uses a man-in-the-middle attack to use your own domain name. Because it is very difficult for these criminals to receive a proper SSL certificate, they won’t be able to perfectly impersonate your site. This means that your users will be far less likely to fall for a phishing attack because they will be looking for the trust indicators in their browser, such as a green address bar, and they won’t see it.

In order to accept credit card information on your website, you must pass certain audits that show that you are complying with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) standards. One of the requirements is properly using an SSL Certificate.

With so many advantages, why would anyone not use SSL? Are there any disadvantages to using SSL certificates? Cost is an obvious disadvantage. SSL providers need to set up a trusted infrastructure and validate your identity so there is a cost involved. This has been alleviated by increased competition in the industry and the introduction of providers like Let's Encrypt. Performance is another disadvantage to SSL. Because the information that you send has to be encrypted by the server, it takes more server resources than if the information weren’t encrypted. The performance difference is only noticeable for web sites with very large numbers of visitors and can be minimized with special hardware in such cases.

Overall, the disadvantages of using SSL are few and the advantages far outweigh them. It is critical that you properly use SSL on all websites. Proper use of SSL certificates will help protect your customers, help protect you, and help you to gain your customers trust and sell more.

Weebly provides directions on how to add an SSL Certificate to your Website.

Using a clear, well-thought-out, and easy to find privacy policy establishes trust with customers. Why? Because once they know you'll protect their data, they may be more likely to buy — and to tell their friends to buy, too.

It's also the law. A good privacy policy should ideally include some explanation for why you're using the data you're using, the steps you take to protect such data, and how a customer can contact you if they have questions or concerns. To help you get started, Weebly has created a privacy policy template. Here's how to do it if you take the tougher road of writing it all yourself.

What's Required
Let's start with the sorts of data that's personally identifying:

• Names
• Email addresses
• Location (city, town, state, street address)
• A Social Security number

States and foreign countries can also have additional privacy requirements, so make sure that your policy is comprehensive. Spending an hour or two studying the requirements is better than suffering a fine; TermsFeed has a free privacy policy tutorial if you've no idea where to start.

Best Practices to Put in Place Today
Once you've studied the requirements and have an idea for what you have to say to meet legal requirements, take these steps to make sure your customers know they'll be well-protected when shopping at your eCommerce site:

1. Create a new page to include your policy. Including privacy policy text as "fine print" at the bottom of your store's home page won't do anything to engender trust. Choose instead to have a distinct page where your policy is spelled out in plain language.
   
2. Link to it from your homepage. You can use the homepage of your store to highlight your privacy policy, just don't do it in a way that leaves shoppers squinting. Instead, include a link in the navigation to your new page. Make it obvious and easy to click.
3. Use reassuring language. Once readers arrive, greet them with language that's respectful and reassuring. Here's an overly simple example: "Thank you so much for shopping with us! We're glad you're here! Please let us know if you have any questions, and in the meantime we want you know that we collect some personally identifying information such as [list everything here] to better serve you. We take the responsibility of protecting your data very seriously, which is why we [list steps taken to protect data here]. But again, if there's anything you need to know more about or simply have questions [include specific instructions for getting in contact here]. Thanks again for visiting!"

Does your site have a policy yet? Getting started on one is easier than ever with Weebly's new privacy policy generator tool.

Nothing in this article constitutes legal advice. Please consult our Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and our Privacy Policy Generator Disclaimer before using the templates.

The State of Blogging Industry & The Ultimate Beginners Guide on How to Create a Blog
by Megan of Websitebuilder

Want an email that looks awesome and converts like crazy?

We joined forces with the talented crew from Really Good Emails to take the guesswork out of designing an excellent email with this email design guide and checklist that’ll make every email you send more awesome.

In this guide, we’ll cover email design best practices for all the different elements of your email campaigns and have a bonus checklist for you at the end. So let’s get to it.

While not a traditional “design element” your subject line is considered one of the most important factors in getting your email opened so your subscribers can see your sweet design so make it engaging, personal, and relevant. Remember, that overuse of CAPS and unnecessary punctuation, as well as some words, can trigger spam filters so respect your subscribers and don’t go there. Use these words instead.

Bonus: CoSchedule has an excellent Headline Analyzer that could also be applied to email subject lines.

When it comes to email subject lines longer isn’t necessarily better. It’s important to keep in mind that your subscribers use a variety of different browsers and email clients as well as mobile devices to consume your emails.

According to data from Return Path, 65 characters seems to be a sweet spot for email subject lines, which is about 15 characters more than the average subject line. When subject lines are 61-70 characters long, they tend to get read. However, most email subject lines are between 41 and 50 characters.

The saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” may never be more true than when it comes to emoji. And emoji in email subject lines can have a major impact. Not only can they take the place of words, be attention-grabbing, and add a definite charm, they can increase your open rates. A report by Experian noted that fifty-six percent of brands using emoji in their email subject lines had a higher unique open rate. Consider us 👍.

If an emoji isn’t supported in the email client, the recipient may see a ☐ character instead.

Remember: Gmail has to have some extra special considerations when using emoji. You may notice in Gmail when you use emoji in the subject line the icon will look different in the inbox view and after the email has been opened. This is due to the inbox view using the Android version of the emoji, meanwhile, the opened email view uses Google’s own emoji style. While the emoji basically look the same, it’s still worth testing to make sure the same sentiment is expressed in both versions.

In addition, for Inbox by Gmail, it’s currently not possible to insert emoticons in Inbox messages using the browser versio

Your preheader can be visible in the inbox preview and in the body of your email, or just in the preview pane if you want to save email real estate. Preheaders add valuable context to your subject line and can help your open rate. Keep it short (between 40-70 characters) and to the point. Use this space to help your customer know why the email is useful to them. Your subject line and preheader text should work together.

Emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened. Go beyond just using your subscriber’s name in the subject line and use other data you have to fuel super relevant messages.

Adding company name, last purchase, or other information helps you to personalize the email in the perfect way for each subscriber. But really good personalization involves more than just injecting a first name. Think about how you could completely change the email based on someone’s information.


Stop thinking of emails as one-to-many and think about them as one-to-one—where each email is customized to each subscriber.

Your email layout should help the viewer know what they should check out first, and where they can go from there. They should be able to scan the email quickly using a logical hierarchy with large headlines and images focusing the attention. Use layout to break up space and help create chunks of content.

Inverted Pyramid
We’re big fans of the inverted pyramid model. It’s essentially a framework for structuring the elements of your email campaigns (headers, imagery, buttons, etc) so they work together to draw people in, deliver the key messages of your campaign and get them to click-through.

By guiding a subscriber’s eye down the page to your CTA, you’ll encourage them to click through to explore more of what you have to offer, resulting in better brand awareness, more web traffic, and ultimately more sales.

This is an awesome article on how to design effective newsletters. Take a moment and check out the full version.

Simple and free email tracking for Gmail.

1. Track the emails you send with Gmail
   
2. Know when they're opened
3. Take action

Published by Campaign Monitor

The Women's March on January 21, 2017, was a landmark day in our history. It was a worldwide protest to advocate legislation and policies regarding human rights and other issues, including women's rights, immigration reform, healthcare reform, the natural environment, LGBTQ rights, racial equality, freedom of religion, and workers' rights.

Many marched, everyone felt deeply, we all took notice on an intimate level to honor our voices. To commemorate and honor the day, I'm pooling 3 online-resources to offer a free 8" x 10", glossy print on metal—suitable for hanging, out of the box.