David Fiske Affiliate Marketing & Web Development

I received a free DVD a few days ago and got round to watching it yesterday.

It was an educational DVD but quite interesting nevertheless.

What was it about?
 
It was from the Information Commissioners Office and was about the Data Protection Act.

I've been registered with the Data Protection Act for around 3 years now so this is nothing new to me. If you're collecting personal data on your websites and you are using that data in the UK, you will probably have to register with them. It costs £35 a year so not a great expense.

There were a couple of important, and handy lessons within this DVD.

1 - Be Open

If you are collecting data, tell the people you are collecting it from what you are going to use it for. If you are selling email addresses, tell them that 3rd parties will have access to it. Apparently a lot of complaints to the Information Commissioners Office are about the fact that information has been used in a way the person complaining was unaware of.

2 - Collect The Bare Minimum

If you have an email newsletter, do you need a full postal address? Do you need to know about shopping habits or the marital status of your visitor? By keeping forms short and to the bare minimum, you can maximise the chance of a visitor subscribing.

If you do have to collect an address, can you do it once the visitor has given you their email address? Can they do it another day? if you run a free iPod style site, can they do it when they redeem their points rather than on signup?

3 - Destroy Old Data

Make it easy to remove people from mailing lists. When you remove people, delete their details rather than simply turning off the emails.

Summary

Most of these points are common sense but sometimes they are overlooked. Just make it easy for people to come and go, and make sure they are aware of what you are doing with their data. Simple as that.