What to write in a Privacy Policy for your first website

22 June 2011

All websites need to have a privacy policy written into them because it lets users know up front what kind of information you are going to ask from them and how you are intend on using it. Having a privacy policy means that you are reassuring the visitors to your site that their information will be used securely and not sold to telemarketers.

Once you have established just what type of information you will be asking visitors to give you enables you to know just what to include in your policy. Remember you may not only be asking them for the personal information like names and addresses or telephones numbers but you may also need to ask to have sensitive credit card and bank account info as well.All this has to be incorporated into your privacy policy so that they will feel safe and confident in supplying such sensitive information about themselves to you. If you fail to give them this information they will be unwilling to do any business with you and will leave your site in order to find someone else who provides the same service or goods but who has a privacy policy in place.

A good way of finding out what to write in your privacy policy is to check out what the competition has included in theirs. Use their ideas to create your own personal one. You can also find free templates and sample ones on the Internet if you are worried about plagiarising the competitions policy. It is always advisable to carry out a little research on the laws relating to privacy policies as this will stand you in good stead when you are writing your own one for your website.

You must make clear to all visitors to your website that any information you hold about them will only be used in accordance with your privacy statement. You must also make certain that they are aware that the page will be updated from time to time and that they should check occasionally to make sure they agree with the changes.

You have to let people know just what information you require from them and what you intend on doing with the information they give you, making very clear that it will only be used for record keeping, how to improve your services or products and how you would send the occasionally promotional email or market research. You must also let them know if you would like to contact them by fax or directly by phone.

Most importantly you must tell them that they information is held securely by you at all times. You should let them know how you intend using cookies and how the use of them helps you to analyse data regarding web traffic and how they let you monitor which pages have been found to be useful. Explain how cookies could also allow them to view more on your web pages

Make sure that visitors are aware that once they leave your site by going on a link to another site that you are no longer responsible for any information they may provide to other sites you are linked to.