If you’ve done business with anyone, ever, at some point in time you probably received a notice in the mail stating the company’s privacy policies. This is commonplace with financial services businesses, such as your insurance company or bank. While your business may not need to have an elaborate, printed and mailed policy, it’s a good idea to clarify what data is being collected about your website visitors, and what your practice is with any data you collect. Having a posted policy helps build trust with visitors and demonstrates your concern with visitor and customer data security.
Once just a mainstay for ecommerce sites, website privacy policies are recommended for any business owner that collects data. “Collecting data” is a broad term that includes traffic stats, contact forms, ecommerce, appointment setting, mailing list subscription forms…you get the idea. If you have a email marketing list, you likely (should) have a “unsubscribe anytime” link, or a posted statement saying you won’t share or sell your list. Think of a website privacy policy is a much broader version of your email marketing signup “no spam” disclaimer.
As most small business websites are generally simple, you don’t even need a lawyer to develop one. Luckily, there’s several online tools that will walk you through the variables that would affect how the language of your privacy policy should be. Costs range from free to as high as $100 – but unless your business is very complex, you can develop a serviceable privacy policy very quickly for less than $40.00.
Here’s a few providers to check out, but please do your own due diligence before using!
- Termsfeed.com: Offers a variety of general and specific website policies that you can customize and use for free or a small fee. I personally used this service and found it simple to use and reasonably priced.
- Free Privacy Policy Generator: Free policy generator. May have watermarks, etc. Worth checking out.
- PrivacyPolicies.com: Free for personal use, $29.95 for a business.
- LegalZoom : Offers a policy generator for existing member-customers.
My recommended solution: Termageddon, the only privacy policy solution that’s actively managed remotely by real human attorneys! For a nominal annual cost, Termageddon updates your privacy, terms and affiliate website policies as the laws change.. and they change a lot. Visit Termageddon to learn more and save 10% with promo code PROVIRTUAL.
For the record, here’s my privacy policy, powered by Termageddon.
