A 2020 survey of 300 IT professionals conducted by Telos found that organizations must comply with 13 different IT security and privacy regulations on average. The respondents also reported they spend $3.5 million every year on compliance activities, according to Help Net Security.
Regardless of what your business is about or the extent to which you use your website, there are specific rules you must follow to ensure your organization is legally compliant.
Failure to meet website laws can result in financial losses, data breaches, and legal implications. With this in mind, take the time to learn everything about online legal requirements relevant to your business, including GDPR compliance for e-commerce companies.
That way, you can ensure you stay on the right side of the law. Read on to learn a few basic web compliance requirements and how to meet them.
Transparent Website Terms And Conditions
While the terms and conditions page isn’t required by law in some countries, creating one for your website is wise. This page outlines the rules for using your website and covers core issues, like content control, liability, and laws and jurisdiction. Typically, having a terms and conditions page helps you limit your responsibility when a customer sues your business. That’s because it allows you to secure the right to own the content you have published on the website.
When creating a terms and conditions page, the rules will vary depending on the nature of your business. However, you must ensure it includes a copyright notice, disclaimer limiting liability in case of errors, establish laws governing disputes, and a detailed privacy policy. Doing so is a critical step to ensuring your website remains compliant.
Privacy Policy
Whether your website allows user-generated content, offers information one-way, or sells services and products online, it must have a privacy policy. This policy clearly explains how your website collects, uses, and stores visitors’ data. Your privacy policy statement must also define whether the data collected on your site is confidential or shared with third-party websites. Most importantly, describe the measures you have in place to keep customer information private.
Remember, your customers will share sensitive information like personal contact details and credit card numbers from time to time. As an e-commerce store owner, you must ensure this data is safe by writing a website privacy policy. Besides being a legal requirement, having a privacy policy on your site is key to establishing trust with your customers. So, make sure you have a link to your privacy policy on your website footer, under the legal or about page, account registration page, or on your site’s checkout page.
Consumer Data Protection
In addition to having a privacy policy in place, you need to implement the best data protection practices to keep your customer information safe from cybercriminals. The last thing you want is sensitive data like customer names, contact details, social security numbers, and credit card numbers to fall into the wrong hands. Therefore, take the necessary steps to prevent data breaches, which compromise your clients’ information, your company’s reputation, and finances.
Keep in mind that even the slightest data breach can result in hefty financial losses and legal problems. Fortunately, you can limit the risk of hackers gaining access to customer information by incorporating an SSL certificate on your site. SSL certificates ensure all the data your clients share is encrypted. You’ll also want to test your site for security vulnerabilities, stay up-to-date with software upgrades, make sure you know where your data is stored, and backup your data.
Keep Your Web Content Compliant
Running a successful e-commerce site entails sharing new content consistently. While publishing blog posts, videos, and images created by others might seem ideal, you should avoid it as much as possible. Using other people’s online content intentionally or unintentionally can lead to copyright issues. If you must use content published on another website, make sure you get the owner’s consent. Compliance experts also recommend protecting your content. You don’t want others to copy and publish your articles and images on their sites without your knowledge.
Although it might be difficult to prevent people from taking your content and sharing it on their sites, there are several ways you can enhance content compliance and security. You can keep your online publications safe by writing a copyright statement on your website footer. You may also take an extra step to archive your website with digital archiving solutions. According to MirrorWeb, archiving solutions capture, index, store, and replay your website in easy-to-navigate SaaS platforms. This tactic goes a long way in supporting your compliance, regulatory, and preservation duties. Not to mention, when you archive your website, you can have on-demand electronic records ready for auditing within a short deadline.
Cookie Consent Notices Are Essential
The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is one of the essential pieces of website laws enhancing the rights of internet users to understand how their data is being used. As a website owner, you’re required to add a cookie policy and consent note to ensure you’re compliant with GDPR laws. Ideally, GDPR requires all websites to allow users the chance to opt-in and out of cookies. So, make sure your cookie policy clearly defines how you use cookies and the devices you use to track and collect information. Also, describe how your website uses cookies, and disclose what other users agree and disagree with. Most importantly, allow your site visitors to accept or decline cookies. As a rule of thumb, never pre-tick the cookie consent checkbox on your site as it violates GDPR rules.
Every organization must ensure their website complies with all online compliance regulations, from data privacy to transaction laws and duties towards preventing plagiarism. Achieving website compliance with the many rules and regulations can be daunting. However, you can make the process less stressful by keeping your online content compliant, meeting privacy policy requirements, and informing your site users about cookies. Also, clearly define your website terms and conditions and implement strict measures to protect your customers’ information from cybercriminals.
