Two points to note: (1) No country level legislation has yet been passed While the EU law comes into effect on May 25th, each European country has yet to pass laws governing their jurisdictions, so it's pretty hard to comply with this at this point. Equally, it is highly likely that different countries interpret the EU law differently, meaning that websites hosted in different EU countries will be subject to different variations of the umbrella EU law.
(2) Explicit (Opt-In) consent is required The price by James Milligan suggests that compliance may be achieved, potentially, through privacy policy, or though terms and conditions. This is a bit misleading in my view and suggests that simple changes to a websites privacy policy might be sufficient. I do not believe this is correct.
The EU law states:
“Member States shall ensure that the storing of information, or the gaining of access to information already stored, in the terminal equipment of a subscriber or user is only allowed on condition that the subscriber or user concerned has given his or her consent, having been provided with clear and comprehensive information, in accordance with Directive 95/46/EC, inter alia about the purposes of the processing.”
This is pretty clear cut Opt-In, so in order to comply, a website will need to get proactive consent to store data on the visitors machine, except for those tasks ‘necessary for the provision of service.’ In practice this means that a user will have to tick a box to consent to the terms of business / privacy policy before the data is stored as a cookie on their machine.
Thanks for this post. It’s a good checklist for getting started. One obvious omission to my mind is in considering Facebook’s Social Plugins.
Facebook’s Social Plugins are your ‘SEO’ tool kit for optimizing connections between your Facebook site and your website. Of these, Facebook Like is, by far, the most important—and also the easiest to implement with just one line of HTML. If you’re in ecommerce, this should be implemented at a product detail page level, and on your individual blog posts as well.
SeeWhy did a survey last month of 476 e-marketers and found that almost 7 out of 10 have already implemented Facebook Like or plan to implement it. There’s more detail here (and you can also see how Facebook Like is on my blog – please ‘Like’ the blog if it’s useful):
In particular I’d suggest reading the section on Facebook Recommendations: you can check out what Facebook users are ‘Liking’ and recommending on your site.
Thanks for posting this. It’s always interesting to hear more about Zappos. I recently caught up with Tony Hseih CEO of Zappos, and he talked in more detail about his conversion philosophy, in particular about how the phone and web work together. Tony talked at length about how Zappos differentiate themselves through the phone, despite being an online business. He refers to building the brand ‘one phone call at a time’ and goes on to explain :
“It’s not about making sales, it’s about how people feel. We want to build a personal emotional connection with our customers, to create happiness so our customers tell their friends and family. Each phone call is a branding opportunity.”
My answers
Two points to note:
(1) No country level legislation has yet been passed
While the EU law comes into effect on May 25th, each European country has yet to pass laws governing their jurisdictions, so it's pretty hard to comply with this at this point. Equally, it is highly likely that different countries interpret the EU law differently, meaning that websites hosted in different EU countries will be subject to different variations of the umbrella EU law.
(2) Explicit (Opt-In) consent is required
The price by James Milligan suggests that compliance may be achieved, potentially, through privacy policy, or though terms and conditions. This is a bit misleading in my view and suggests that simple changes to a websites privacy policy might be sufficient. I do not believe this is correct.
The EU law states:
“Member States shall ensure that the storing of information, or the gaining of access to information already stored, in the terminal equipment of a subscriber or user is only allowed on condition that the subscriber or user concerned has given his or her consent, having been provided with clear and comprehensive information, in accordance with Directive 95/46/EC, inter alia about the purposes of the processing.”
This is pretty clear cut Opt-In, so in order to comply, a website will need to get proactive consent to store data on the visitors machine, except for those tasks ‘necessary for the provision of service.’ In practice this means that a user will have to tick a box to consent to the terms of business / privacy policy before the data is stored as a cookie on their machine.
James – could you clarify?
Thanks for this post. It’s a good checklist for getting started. One obvious omission to my mind is in considering Facebook’s Social Plugins.
Facebook’s Social Plugins are your ‘SEO’ tool kit for optimizing connections between your Facebook site and your website. Of these, Facebook Like is, by far, the most important—and also the easiest to implement with just one line of HTML. If you’re in ecommerce, this should be implemented at a product detail page level, and on your individual blog posts as well.
SeeWhy did a survey last month of 476 e-marketers and found that almost 7 out of 10 have already implemented Facebook Like or plan to implement it. There’s more detail here (and you can also see how Facebook Like is on my blog – please ‘Like’ the blog if it’s useful):
http://seewhy.com/blog/2010/07/07/facebooks-social-plugins-challenge-goo...
The most important (for ecommerce) of Facebook’s Social Plugins are also covered here:
http://seewhy.com/blog/2010/06/29/top-three-facebook-social-plugins-for-...
In particular I’d suggest reading the section on Facebook Recommendations: you can check out what Facebook users are ‘Liking’ and recommending on your site.
Hope that helps
Charles
Thanks for posting this. It’s always interesting to hear more about Zappos. I recently caught up with Tony Hseih CEO of Zappos, and he talked in more detail about his conversion philosophy, in particular about how the phone and web work together. Tony talked at length about how Zappos differentiate themselves through the phone, despite being an online business. He refers to building the brand ‘one phone call at a time’ and goes on to explain :
“It’s not about making sales, it’s about how people feel. We want to build a personal emotional connection with our customers, to create happiness so our customers tell their friends and family. Each phone call is a branding opportunity.”
You can read the full interview here: http://seewhy.com/blog/2010/05/11/zappos-website-conversion-philosophy