Your online business web site is not only an opportunity but also a responsibility. A visitor to your web site is engaging in a transaction with you even in case they don't buy anything, so it is in your company's best interest to be clear, transparent and upfront about whether and how you collect, store and use their information. If you are collecting and storing information about your users, you need a privacy policy to protect yourself and inform your visitors about its potential use.
Why not just copy a standard 2000-word Privacy Policy from another web site?
Don't copy a legal document and use it without consulting a lawyer or making sure that you understand what you're committing to. Also, many web sites use a boiler plate Privacy Policy that may be filled with legal jargon, but this is not the sole way to go.
In the case of e-commerce websites with a large user base, such legal and formal privacy policies can be essential. However, most small business web sites neither need nor benefit from long documents that readers cannot make sense of. Lots of small business web sites use third-party processors like Paypal or e-junkie, so the threat of on-site exposure is already minimized.
Your privacy policy is for your readers, so it's valuable to write it in a language that your average visitor can understand. Significantly, a policy document's main purpose is to decrease your own liability. So, more than your visitors, you need to understand your site's privacy policy so that you can monitor your site's strategies and reduce your exposure to potential problems.
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What is User Information?
Your website's visitors can possibly leave a lot of personal data on your web site that can be used for the purposes of identification, marketing and interaction. Some of these include:
IP address
Email address
Contact information (in a form)
Comments (on a blog)
Credit card information (for purchases)
Social media information
etc.
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What Should Your Privacy Policy Document Include?
Making a privacy policy is in fact very easy, and most web sites need to attend to only a few main questions about User Information, and primarily to highlight that user information is not misused, used to identify individuals, or passed on to third parties without their consent. So in your privacy policy, don't forget to address the following concerns about your users' information:
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Collecting: What and How
What information do you collect about your visitors, and how do you collect it?
Using Information
How do you use the collected information?
User Protection
Do you protect your users' information so that it is not passed on or available to third parties?
User Control
What kind of rights do your users have over their personal information? How can they get in touch with you with such control?
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By answering these simple questions you can cover your bases to a great degree. If you are not an e-commerce vendor, think about making a Privacy Policy document that not only relates clearly with your readers but also sets you different from your competition.
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