Your commercial website needs a privacy policy (and other policy pages too)

[bargainbloodhound]

Today's topic: Privacy Policies

Disclaimer or Privacy Policy

This is not a rule: it’s a must! Companies deal with clients; people who wish their privacy to be protected and sometimes other sites can provide illegal or harmful information...The privacy policy is, according to the same source, a disclaimer as well: “A privacy policy is a disclaimer placed on a website informing users about how the website deals with a user's personal information.”

Put simply, maintaining audience expectations and delivering usable content are the main factors influencing the success of a business website. But the website architecture has to be followed by a cutting edge design and reliable ways to increase users’ loyalty.

http://community.tuliptools.com/index.ph...546.0.html

from Yahoo Stores:

You are required to have a Privacy Policy page in your store at all times. This page has to be created and approved before your store is open for business.

Under the Yahoo! Merchant Solutions Terms of Service, merchants agree:

    ... to post a privacy policy in its Merchant Store that, at a minimum, discloses any and all uses of personal information collected from users by Merchant.

Each privacy policy should be specific to the web site or merchant who creates it. Only you, the merchant, can say whether your privacy policy accurately describes your use of personal information collected from your users

http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/store/edit/edit-12.html

How willing are you to buy online?
If you're skeptical, you can't expect your customers to feel any differently. Before they'll transact, customers need to feel safe.

Part of that safe feeling is the knowledge that their privacy is respected, which is why Internet privacy policies are so important. Research shows that consumers are more likely to complete online transactions if they know beforehand how their personal information is going to be used.

In fact, legislation in several Countries and US States now require online businesses to disclose their privacy policies before customers are asked to register any details.

http://www.p3pprivacy.com/

...and now we go to my selection for Boinktard of the Day

New forum owner asks "do I need a privacy policy?".  The answer he receives from today's Boinktard of the Day:

This is yet another subject that I've never been able to figure out what the fuss is all about.  In reality something like that [a privacy policy] can only harm you and the life of the forum.

Clueless in suburban Virginia is someone who really is totally clueless.  : She's currently running a multi-seller site which accepts payments from users but has no privacy policy or terms of service (with the exception of a sentence that says the site operates on the "honor system"  ).  This is also someone who thinks the way to advertise an online business is through forum spam...and then wonders why her online ventures haven't done too well.  Read her quote and do the opposite because that is about the worst advice I've seen given anywhere and is completely wrong.

Your commercial website, or membership site needs a privacy policy (and other policies including return policies for ecommerce sites) for 2 reasons:

1. to increase buyer trust in your business.  Trust is an essential factor in many buyers decisions to buy or not to buy from small unknown websites, or to join or not join membership sites.  A recent survery in Internet Retailer found that 40% of buyers actually do look for Privacy Policies when buying from sites (and surprise, many of them do more than just look for a link to a policy, they actually read it).  If your site doesn't have a privacy policy there's a good chance many buyers in that 40% group will decide to buy elsewhere.  If your unknown membership site or forum doesn't have a privacy policy there's a good chance many lurkers will remain lurkers and never join.

2. the primary reason to have a privacy policy, and also terms and conditions, or user agreements, or policies pages, or return policies (a return policy is another essential for an ecommerce site) listed on your site is to (attempt to) protect your fr_k'n ass as much as possible from any negative event you can think of....see here for an example of a terms of condition deigned for this purpose.

Short version: if you have a website that collects any personal information (i.e. email addresses and/or names, addresses, credit card details, etc, etc.) you need to have a privacy policy:  it can either be a separate policy or it can be incorporated into your site's terms and conditions (although a separate privacy policy is more effective for building buyer trust).

More resources for Privacy policy information:

The W3C 's Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) Project http://www.w3.org/P3P/
Online Privacy Alliance: http://www.privacyalliance.com/
Truste: http://www.truste.org/
The Direct Marketing Association's online privacy policy generator:
http://www.the-dma.org/privacy/creating.shtml
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development guide to creating privacy policies
http://www.oecd.org/document/1/0,2340,en..._1,00.html
Info on privacy policies and an online privacy policy generator from P3P Privacy: http://www.p3pprivacy.com/

[mandy]

Your commercial website needs a privacy policy 

Change the title to your commercial website or forum needs a privacy policy if you require email addresses or other personal info during registration   

[BellisimaJ.]

..and now we go to my selection for Boinktard of the Day boinktard

New forum owner asks "do I need a privacy policy?".  The answer he receives from today's Boinktard of the Day:

Quote from: clueless in suburban Virginia
This is yet another subject that I've never been able to figure out what the fuss is all about.  In reality something like that [a privacy policy] can only harm you and the life of the forum.

Gee, I must have been reading/raiding the same forum.

[xppman]

I would add a privacy policy doesn't have to be long winded or full of legalese.

Just be straight up with your customers.

Mine is simple and to the point.

It pretty much says.

I WON'T share your fucking info w no one.

I've got well over 4000 peeps private info and I'll be damned If I'm sharing it with anyone
because it's no ones else's business and I know third parties would exploit this information
to make a buck.

Trust is the KEY of e commerce 101 and this topic is on page ONE.

[amy]

Trust is the KEY of e commerce 101 and this topic is on page ONE.

  Not understanding the importance of trust is one of the things that hurts many eBay sellers trying to make the transition to websites.  I've seen so many people set up sites where the owner's identity/location was hidden, no contact info anywhere on the site except for a free Yahoo/Gmail email address, hidden WHOIS info on the domain name, no mention of store policies/returns.