Why You Need To STOP What You’re Doing Right Now & Implement a Cookie & Privacy Policy

Are you a small e-commerce business owner? Do you want to monetize your successful blog? Are you a successful affiliate marketer?

This may be the right time to pause whatever you are doing and create cookies and privacy policy for your website.

A cookie and privacy policy is as essential to a website that collects user’s data as it is for you to earn money. In this article, we will discuss the significance of implementing cookies and privacy policy on your website.

If you are conducting e-commerce business, marketing a product, collecting user information (yes this included Google Analytics and your contact form), conducting affiliate marketing, running a referral scheme, or are earning money through advertising networks, your website is definitely storing cookies in your visitors’ computers to track their internet usage.

When you collect someone’s information, it is imperative that you declare this fact to the users and ensure them that the data you are collecting is not being distributed illegally or being used unethically.

It’s the law! (well, in most countries)

This declaration and insurance are stated in a websites privacy policy. To start with, most countries have laws that dictate that you should have an honest and clear privacy policy if you are collecting user data. Everyone operating or interacting with countries within the EU we are now all bound by GDPR regulations. This could see your company being fined anything from 10 million euros to 100 million euros should you be found in breach of these regulations. This is serious stuff!

Now, this isn’t about whether you should do it or not, now it is about keeping away from illegal practices.

Most countries are very strict about websites implementing privacy policies and have very detailed guidelines.

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/

These guidelines require you to state it even if you are collecting your visitors’ email addresses and ensure that this information will be protected from unconcerned entities.

Third party services won’t work with you without it

A lot of service providers are very strict about the type of websites that they can do business with. A very significant decisive factor in for such service providers is that the website must have a clear and honest cookie and privacy policy in place. Payment gateway providers such as Stripe and WorldPay will require your website to have both of these and an SSL before they will work with you.

Another popular example of such service providers is Google AdWords. Google AdWords is an excellent remarketing tool, but remarketing initiatives require a website to store cookies on its users’ computers to track their relevant activities on the internet.

This is why Google AdWords require you to have a privacy policy, but also requires you to update this policy and state that you use Google AdWords for remarketing, how this works, and how a user can opt out of this remarketing campaign.

There are millions of websites and countless service providers that you have to consider when understanding the importance of a privacy policy.

People care about their privacy

Perhaps the most important reason to implement a cookie and privacy policy is that humans are very sensitive about their private information being collected and/or used without their knowledge.

Not only is it unlawful, but it is also morally very wrong to not declare a privacy policy if you collect user information.

Want some help creating and adding a privacy policy to your website? Get in touch with us today.

https://dragonfiremarketing.com/contact/