Five ways GDPR will affect your online business
GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations) have been in place since 2018. They dictate the manner in which you handle your marketing activities online.
Irrespective of what type of online business you have, adhering to these regulations is mandatory. You cannot simply pick and choose when to participate.
Instead, you need to put together an effective strategy for managing GDPR, which you will need to address on a regular basis.
With that being said, continue reading to discover more about the different ways that GDPR will impact your online business.
1. Your use of cookies
The first way that GDPR impacts your online business is with regard to your use of cookies.
Cookies are only referred to once under GDPR, yet there are sizable repercussions for any business that utilizes them to track the browsing activity of their users. If you’re interested in learning about cookie laws, you can read more here. In GDPR, Recital 30 states the following:
“Natural persons may be associated with online identifiers […] such as internet protocol addresses, cookie identifiers or other identifiers […].
“This may leave traces which, in particular when combined with unique identifiers and other information received by the servers, may be used to create profiles of the natural persons and identify them.”
What this basically means is that a cookie can be deemed personal data if it can be utilized for the identification of an individual, either indirectly or directly.
The majority of cookies today do tend to be used in this manner, such as cookies for chat tools, surveys, functional services, advertising, and analytics.
You cannot simply inform users that they accept cookies by using your website. If there is no free and genuine choice, there is no valid consent.
Simply heading to a website does not count as consent, and therefore, it is imperative that you make it possible for website users to either reject or accept cookies.
At the same time, it needs to be as easy as possible for consent to be withdrawn as it is for consent to be given. If businesses wish to tell visitors to block cookies if they do not provide their consent, they need to make them accept cookies initially.
An opt-out option must also be provided on your website. Even after receiving valid consent, websites must allow people the option to change their minds.
If you ask users for consent via opt-in boxes in a settings menu, users need to always be able to go back to the menu to adjust their preferences.
2. You need to ask visitors for permission
One of the clearest elements of GDPR is that you need to explicitly ask for someone’s permission to utilize their data.
It is not viable to conduct business by using the auto opt-in option anymore.
You can no longer assume that you have someone’s permission. This is not acceptable. This is even the case if that site visitor places an order and ends up becoming one of your customers.
It is also not deemed acceptable anymore to pre-tick a subscription box when asking visitors to sign-up for your newsletter. Using double negative words is not accepted either.
This is not everything. You cannot stop at simply making the sign-up process as obvious as possible. You need to go further than this.
This involves keeping a record of when every person provided you with permission to get in touch with them, and make a note of precisely what they were shown when they decided to opt in to your communication channels.
3. Security must become an even bigger priority
In addition to the points that we have mentioned so far, GDPR also indicates that providing a secure website for your visitors is a must.
After all, GDPR is all about data protection, and you certainly aren’t going to be protecting your visitors’ data if you allow a hacker to steal it with ease.
You also need to make sure that all data is stored in a secure manner. This means that an SSL certificate is required if a customer or visitor’s data passes to you via your website, which we are sure will be the case if you run any sort of online business.
After all, visitor data can include a person’s phone number, email address, or even cookies, as explained earlier.
Because of this, it is imperative to ensure that any page on your site that asks for information from a visitor is secured with the use of SSL.
In addition to using SSL, there are a number of other steps you can take to make sure your website is as secure as possible. Examples include:
- Running regular backups
- Keeping your website up-to-date
- Ensuring passwords are uncrackable
- Installing anti-malware software
- Choosing a web host with care
- Managing add-ons and third-party programs effectively
Remember that securing your website is not a one time thing. After all, the Internet is changing all of the time, so you need to address your security efforts regularly.
4. You will need to highlight how customers and visitors can stop all communications with you
In addition to the points mentioned so far, another way that GDPR will impact your business is in terms of how your customers are able to stop communicating with you if they wish to do so.
If someone does not want to communicate with your business, you need to accept this. You cannot simply ignore the person’s request to do so.
You have to make it as easy as possible for people to opt out of receiving communications from you. You need to ensure it is evident to anyone how they can opt-out of communications via print, email, or phone.
Once someone has decided that they do not want to get communications from you anymore, it is vital that they do not get any type of communication from you in any shape or form. If they do, you could find yourself in very deep waters.
To make sure that these visitors do not end up falling back into communications, keep a list of people who you should not contact. Make sure these people are never added back into any of your marketing lists.
If you do not comply, it can cause sizable fines from regulators. Not only will you have the fines to worry about, but your reputation will take a big battering as well.
5. GDPR will impact your relationship with other laws
The final way that GDPR will impact your business is in terms of your relationship with other rules and regulations.
One thing to note is that it is made explicitly clear in GDPR that if any of the regulations are in conflict with another law, you should pay attention to the original law instead.
Therefore, to give you an example, there is a conflict between GDPR and PECR legislation with regard to telephone and email marketing. In this case, PECR legislation does take precedence.
Somewhat oddly, PECR does enable what they deem a ‘soft opt-in.’
This basically means that if you have obtained the contact information of a customer whenever they have placed an order with your business, you are permitted to communicate with them regarding the same sort of things that they were interested in to begin with.
However, just to make matters even more confusing, though, PECR is currently in the process of being replaced by the EU. stricter ePrivacy rules are being discussed, and so we do not currently know whether or not the soft opt-in option is going to remain.
At present, it is probably best to make sure you get an explicit opt-in for your customers. After all, it is not worth taking the risk.
Nevertheless, it is worth considering the fact that explicitly opt-ins are advantageous. It is not all bad news! When you get an explicit opt-in, you know that everyone on your communication list actually wants to receive emails and other forms of communication from you.
This means that you have a high-quality list, rather than one that is purely filled with quantity. At the end of the day, if you find yourself emailing big groups of people who do not actually want to hear from you, you are only going to end up frustrating them.
Final words on the different ways that GDPR will impact your business
So there you have it: everything you need to know about the different ways that GDPR can impact your business.
We hope that this has helped you to get a better understanding of some of the different changes you will need to make in light of these regulations for online businesses.
About the author
Kerry Leigh Harrison has over 11+ years of experience as a content writer.
She graduated from university with a First Class Hons Degree in Multimedia Journalism. In her spare time, she enjoys attending sports and music events.
