There’s some important changes coming into effect on the 25th of May 2018, and your website, marketing and sales items needs to be ready for them. The issue is complience to General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). Long story short, everybody who has a website, or holds people information, has records data about people’s behaviour, makes sales calls or sends printed items needs to be aware and make changes to confirm with new regulations.
Websites will require a privacy policy plus terms and conditions pages. As most sites use Google Analytics, use cookies and capture peoples names and email addresses via contact forms. You’ve probably already seen the cookie agreements on sites.
Email marketing requires recipients to “opt-in”, and even confirm their email addresses, before being added to any mailing list. Plus they must be able to unsubscribe, this is a must.
Printed materials should similarly be opt-in, with a clear process to opt-out. This would be a contact process which allows the recipient to contact the sender to be removed from their mailing list.
Sales calls should make use of the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) and those listed shouldn’t be called – and this applies to businesses listed within the related CTPS listing. So it’s clear there is a general thrust towards protecting peoples information within websites and online processes / marketing – while always getting consent. This is an EU wide measure coming into effect on the 25th of May.
Seperately but relatedly the security of websites will need to improve. Google’s latest Chrome browser will flag any site without an SSL certificate as potential dangerous – most likely resulting in the person avoiding your site. SSL certificates are already used by eCommerce sites. I can provide SSL certificates for your website. Cost is at least £80 per year, additional cost.
I’ll be preparing a template privacy policy and terms & conditions page for sites that wish to use them at a standard rate cost for my time and implementation.
Useful Links
European Portal for GDPR: https://www.eugdpr.org
Telephone Preference Service: www.tpsonline.org.uk
SSL Certificates: https://www.heartinternet.uk/ssl-certificates