Red Kite Creative

Privacy

Does Your Website Need a Privacy Policy?

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If you have a form on your site, the answer is ‘yes.’

If you collect any type of personally identifiable information (PII) like names, email addresses, phone numbers, or payment information, you need to have a privacy policy on your site. If not, you potentially risk penalties and legal challenges down the road. And if you have an old privacy policy, it most likely has not kept pace with legal changes.

Privacy law is changing fast – more U.S. states are moving to create their own privacy legislation, and if you have European customers, you may already be familiar with the GDPR (General Data Privacy Regulation) that requires protection and disclosure of customer data.

The Colorado Privacy Act

Did you know that Colorado (where we’re based) has a brand new privacy law that was officially enacted on July 8, 2021? It’s the third state (after CA and VA) to enact privacy legislation. If you conduct business in our state or target residents of CO with your products and services, this new law may apply to your business if you have more than 25,000 customers. More information on the Colorado Privacy Act here.

How to Get a Privacy Policy

Check out our sister site WP Minder’s latest post on why websites need privacy policies and get in touch if you have questions or are interested in getting a policy added to your own site.

Weekly Links Roundup – Great Photos, Free Stock Photos, CCPA Compliance

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The top website and online marketing links of the week.

Are you a stickler for great imagery on your website to show off your products or services to the max? Or is it just one of those things that doesn’t get a lot of attention – you either have little imagery or use photos you took on your phone? Whichever camp you’re in, the quality of your site images says a lot about your business. Learn why having great images is so important to giving a professional impression to your customers and how high-quality photos improve your credibility.

To follow up, here’s a review of 10 sources for free stock photos that have pretty good variety in their collections.

By now, you’re likely very familiar with GDPR (the European regulations that improve consumer privacy and control over personal information). Now we have the CCPA, the California Consumer Protection Act. CCPA is similar to GDPR but compliance will require you make some additional changes in your website, especially if you have customers in CA.

Many smaller business will not be impacted because they don’t meet at least one of the thresholds, which are:

  • annual gross revenues of $25 million;
  • annually buy, sell, receive, or share for commercial purposes the personal information of 50,000 or more consumers, households, or devices; or
  • derive 50 percent or more of its annual revenues from selling consumers’ personal information.

However, it’s still a good idea to get familiar with the new regulations because we’ll likely see more of these in the future. Learn how to make your WordPress site comply with CCPA.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

New Data Privacy Law for Colorado Businesses

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As of September 1, 2018, Colorado-based businesses are affected by a new consumer data privacy law. The new law’s data protection standards are now among the strictest in the US. But the good news is, if you’re already complying with GDPR, the European General Data Protection Rule, it appears that no additional steps will be required: you’re already in compliance with the Colorado law.

These new consumer data protection rules (in the US and around the world) can be quite confusing. There are a number of complex actions that must be taken to bring a website and its connected services into compliance but little information on how to do it properly. Many of the standards are still a moving target in many respects.

If you’re not sure if your site is compliant with either GDPR or the Colorado law, contact us and we can help you get started.

The GDPR affects all US companies that do business in Europe, and its influence is now being felt in the US as states work to make protection of consumer data stronger. Learn more about the new Colorado data privacy law. And for a wider view of privacy rules, here is information on the GDPR for US-based businesses.

 

Weekly Links Roundup – Testimonials, Product Reviews, GDPR, Analytics Alternatives

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The top website and marketing links of the week.

I always encourage clients to display testimonials on their site, if their industry allows them. Testimonials are a great way to influence prospective customers toward purchasing your products or services. And reviews let your customers speak – even if they are not always positive, how you handle negative reviews is important, too. Letting prospects see how you take care of problems is at least as important as the glowing testimonials! Learn more about why you should add testimonials and reviews to your site.

…And along that vein here’s a great guide to adding product reviews to your WordPress site. This is a comprehensive overview with a good selection of recommended plugins, and why you might want to use one of them even if you’re running an ecommerce site with WooCommerce which already has built-in reviews.

If you were in a tizzy trying to get your site into compliance with GDPR last week, you were far from alone. Read this opinion post  on GDPR from the New York Times – it might make you feel better.

Finally… if you collect traffic data for your website, did you know that Google Analytics is not the only option? That’s what I said. Learn about Kissmetrics, Matomo (formerly Piwik) and AFS Analytics. All except Kissmetrics offer a free plan as well as commercial pricing.

 

Weekly Links Roundup – Ecommerce, GDPR, Instagram, Blogging, Facebook PYMK

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The top website and marketing links of the week.

If you run an ecommerce site, you’re probably interested in increasing conversions, right? Here is a post about the 13 things your ecommerce pages need to do just that – get more sales.

The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is coming up quickly. Learn how to prepare your site, even if you’re not selling or targeting EU customers directly.

Generally, it’s recommended that a business start with only one or two social media networks to start off. If Instagram is one of your go-to social media locales, or you’re thinking about using it, check out this post on how using Instagram can help your branding efforts.

Getting ready to jump into the big world of blogging? Need some help getting started? Here’s a short but fairly detailed guide to writing great content for your blog.

And finally… Still on Facebook? Here’s some scary stuff: learn how far-reaching FB’s People You May Know (PYMK) algorithm really is.