Red Kite Creative

privacy

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 – Facebook, GDPR, Email Open Rates, WordPress Launches

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The top website and marketing links of the week.

If you’ve considered deleting your Facebook account, but can’t bring yourself to do it for one reason or another (like if you use it for your business, for example), there are still things you can do (probably? maybe?) to improve the security of your account. Take it with a grain of salt, but try taking these Facebook privacy steps if you’re not ready to go all the way.

Speaking of privacy, the new GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is going into effect in May and will affect you if you do business with EU countries or target their residents for marketing in any way. Learn about GDPR and how it can affect your business website.

If you do email marketing, or are thinking about starting (and you should, because it’s still a high-ROI marketing method) check out these 5 tips on improving email open rates.

Many of my clients were under the mistaken assumption that once we launched their WordPress site, all the work was done. Nope. Here are 11 things you (the website owner) need to do once your site launches (hint: if you’re our client, a lot of this has already been done for you, and the rest was explained during our training meeting).