The following article was submitted by Heather Wills from TRUSTe, who reminds us that customer confidence can lead to more sales…and gaining customer confidence starts with ensuring their privacy.
Privacy – It’s Your Best Policy
As a small business, you may dismiss the idea of having a privacy policy. However, with identity theft on the rise, affecting almost 10 million victims in 2008 (Javelin Strategy & Research: www.javelinstrategy.com), privacy has become highly relevant to both consumers and businesses.
A privacy policy is a legal document that discloses how a party retains, processes, discloses, and purges a customer’s data. Such examples could be the instance of a website providing information about the use of personal information – particularly personal information collected via the website – by the website owner. (Source: Wikipedia)
Gain Confidence to Gain Customers
According to a Yankee Research study, 55 percent of consumers surveyed said they had experienced online incidents, which caused them to consider a possible security issue when visiting a Website.
With more people online now than ever before, the number of cyber-criminals trying to exploit consumer information has also grown to record numbers. This makes third party trustmarks an essential tool for both consumers and businesses, irrespective of their size.
Ensure that your Privacy Policy addresses the following issues:
- The information that will be collected: email addresses, date of birth, etc
- What will be done with information collected?
- Whether a third party will use this information?
- Measures undertaken by the company in order to protect the information
- How the privacy policy is in compliance with the law
- Contact information
A privacy policy needs to be simple and friendly. It should disclose all points pertaining to the information collected from customers and how it is going to be used.
About TRUSTe
TRUSTe provides companies with simple, iconic, and easy-to-read privacy statements that reflect and protect the businesses they serve. You can opt for professional help from TRUSTe, which provides industry-leading complaint-handling services for small and medium businesses. These services can help you simplify privacy issues and protect your reputation. This also means that you will not have to approach a lawyer for a simple privacy policy.
Can’t visit Small Biz Bee on a regular basis? You can stay up to date by having the latest Small Biz Bee news delivered to you for free via RSS or Email.
For exclusive Small Biz Bee content and offers, sign up for our free newsletter:
Similar Posts:
- Ensure Your Business Has The Right Type of Insurance
- From Zero To Hero: 10 Ways to Grow Your Email List
- A Simple Solution to Attract 63% More Customers!
- How to Write an Op-Ed Article
- New Comments Policy at Smallbizbee.com
{ 3 trackbacks }
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
You forgot another secondary but important point:
There are a lot of people that believe Google factors the presence of a privacy policy into it’s algorithms.
Also, if you have any AdSense on your site you’re supposed to have the AdSense Privacy Policy somewhere in your own privacy policy. I don’t know if they factor that into payouts or search rankings, however.
It’s just one of many things that help instil trust in a customer. Other things to consider are a returns policy, prominent contact details and secure payment accreditation.
You can’t be too careful these days. Internet thieves are getting more and more clever, putting more and more people on guard. As site owners it is our job to demonstrate our legitimacy and help make potential customers more comfortable.
Your points about a privacy policy are excellent and should help us accomplish that task.
Cheers
George
98% of consumers make some sort of check for security reassurance on a site before they purchase online. Top of the list is the security padlock on their browsers (88%).
Good information about privacy policy. It’s good thing gain confidence to gain customers. We can gain more customers.