You have definitely come across a web page that asks you to enter a meaningless combination of words and numbers into a text box, when you want to sign up, or register on that website. This is what is called CAPTCHA
CAPTCHA, which stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart, is generated by online softwares that automatically puts random letters and numbers together and asks the users to enter the code into the provided text box.
What are the main types of CAPTCHA?
There are three main types of CAPTCHA; text based which is a randomly generated sequence of words and letters, picture based that refers to image recognition tasks to distinguish whether the user is human or computer. The third type is audio based CAPTCHA, which is developed for people with some types of disability. In this method, users must listen to a recorded voice and repeat the numbers and words mentioned in the voice.
What is CAPTCHA used for?
The main purpose of CAPTCHA is to examine whether the client who is trying to access a website, service or data is human or a bot, as reading the CAPTCHA code is easy for humans but is impossible or at least very difficult for computers at this stage.
Hence, CAPTCHA is basically a strong tool to prevent spammers and hackers from entering unwanted data such as comments, spammy links, fraudulent content and a lot more into a website.
What is reCAPTCHA?
While there are different kinds of CAPTCHA as an authentication test that are owned by different companies, reCAPTCHA is the same thing that is developed and owned by Google. Google provides reCAPTCHA service for free for the sake of preventing websites from scammers and hackers attack.
What is an invisible CAPTCHA?
To sort out the user experience negative effects, invisible reCAPTCHA has been developed. In this method, there is no need for users to solve a puzzle or type a sequence of letters and numbers in the text box. Instead, the software provider tries to distinguish whether the client is a human or a bot by monitoring the user’s behaviour such as moving the mouse on the screen. Even though it’s a good alternative for CAPTCHA, in case of failure, it would be a disaster from a user experience point of view.
CAPTCHA and ecommerce
High level of security is needed to be applied for ecommerce stores, as sensitive information is provided by online customers. CAPTCHA, as a strong tool to prevent scammers and hackers, is considered as a must-have tool by some web designers, when it comes to ecommerce web design in Australia and also other parts of the world.. However, there are many market participants that are against using CAPTCHA for ecommerce, as it is believed that it would negatively impact ecommerce traffic and conversion rate due to inverse consequences on user experience.
How CAPTCHA affects SEO
Generally speaking, CAPTCHA would negatively affect conversion rate, as it is found to be annoying to users. That’s because there are many users that are not able to recognize the right CAPTCHA code and after trying a few times, they would refuse to proceed. Besides, for users with sight disabilities, it is hard to work out the CAPTCHA code.
Based on research conveyed by MOZ, disabling CAPTCHA would improve a company’s conversion rate by up to 3.2%.
Therefore, in order to enhance your website’s SEO in Australia, it is worth your while to utilize other security options that don’t not have a negative impact on user experience.
CAPTCHA; where to use and where to not use
Like specified earlier in this article, CAPTCHA is more likely to have a negative impact on user experience. Therefore, for websites where organic traffic and conversion rate is crucial, using CAPTCHA shouldn’t be a part of your web design in Australia. However you must consider other security tools as an alternative to CAPTCHA.
In contrast, for some informative websites, such as corporate websites, where conversion rate is not applicable, CAPTCHA can be utilized for security purposes. Hence, if you are looking for a proper corporate web design in Australia, CAPTCHA can be a good option for you.
Final Words
Website security is one of the most important parts of a proper web design and SEO plan. There are a wide range of security options and tools that can be used depending on the nature of your website. It is crucial to work with a professional web design and digital marketing service provider to utilize the tool that suits your needs best.
Websima is more than happy to help, if you feel in need of assistance during your journey to develop your website.
If that’s the case, please feel free to contact us to book for a free consultation meeting with our talented team.
