Most web designers focus mainly on Home page and Services pages. Then give secondary consideration to their Portfolio page and whatever is left over goes to the Contact Us page as a third tier consideration. Rarely do these designers give much attention to the Privacy Policy page and/or Terms And Conditions pages. The reasons for this make some sense as the general perception for these type of pages is they are a standard sort of legal document.
Omitting Privacy Policies and Terms And Conditions pages are unwise, especially where local and national laws require such information to be presented. Moreover, internet hackers, privacy breaches on mobile apps, and other miscellaneous law breaking activities are rising at alarming rates. Thus, properly educating visitors and producing legal documents which establish professional trust on your website is not only standard, but mandatory. Your viable competitors will have this in place and failure to implement such pages could lead any visitor to make this a matter of legal importance which website owners will take immediate notice of.
Therefore, let’s take the Privacy Policy web page design seriously and review good standards in this post.
What Visitors Think About The Privacy of Their Data
Recent surveys regarding privacy concerns of internet and mobile app users has revealed many, eye-opening facts for website owners. This data is equally applicable to web designers who tend to spend most of their time on UX and Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). For instance:
- Only 37% of the people surveyed willingly share their personal data with a website without ever reading the privacy policies, or seeing some sort of assurance.
- Whereas, 70% of all visitors are curious to know why their personal data is collected and where it may be used. This means most visitors are highly sensitive to the expressed privacy policies of a website or an application.
- Mature people (i.e. 35+ age group) and mostly women tend to be more sensitive to the security of their data. These segments of the population often read privacy policies of a website before committing to any sort of deal or purchase.
How and What Should be Present in Our Privacy Policy Web Page
Now that we understand the importance of these type of web pages for our users and in their roles for our CRO directly, our task is to build trust among our visitors. Again, this is good professional practice for our website. It also can save your reputation, or brand, from the irresponsible actions of certain end users, in the eyes of the law.
Let’s make a check list about what should be included in our Privacy Policy web page design:
- Define the keywords or phrases used on your website, for improving the understanding of your terms among the lowest literacy level of your visitors.
- Clearly depict the rights of users
- Warn visitors about their responsibilities for their actions on the website, particularly with regards to potential misuse
- Assure your audience about the security of their personal data. Make clear which part(s) are kept with the owner, which one(s) may be transferred to third parties, and which are discarded immediately after use (such as credit card details after payment).
- Assure visitors or subscribers that their contact details, particularly email addresses, are not used for any sort of spamming. Define what content would be delivered in a newsletter or during product promotions.
- Define the legal liabilities of users for damage incurred by their irresponsible actions.
- Finally, update privacy policy pages regularly and cite the date of each update
Presentation of Privacy Policy Web Page
There are many ways to effectively present a Privacy Policy web page, so your users are not bored by legal citations using uncommon language. These ways may include:
- Summarize your privacy policies in a few sentences and then link this to a page with full details, written in legal and professional terms. For instance, the FullContact website does this with short sentences and offers “more” buttons for the extended details.
- In the case of the Mite website, they put their brief legal terms in plain English and link them with a detailed professional documentation.
- Mailchimp has not only grouped the legal documents and made the information easy to understand, but also offers definitions of important keywords, by explaining them in plain English
- The best approach I have found is by the iubenda website. They offer appropriate icons, accompanied with text so users can easily scan them visually.
References & More Reading
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