| Six
Ways to Save Your Site and the Internet
You are not
only a Web Consultant, Internet Entrepreneur, or Web Business Owner;
you’re also an Internet user. Since you are reading this article,
you have already achieved a certain level of Web sophistication.
It is vitally
important that when you make decisions regarding a website, an Internet
program, an e-marketing campaign or a Web service, you take advantage
of the fact that you are a Web user also.
What this means
is that practicing the Golden Rule will guide you more than any
article, book, tape, class or seminar out there. Let’s slightly
alter this Rule to fit the 21st Century Web world:
“Always
create an experience on the Web for others exactly how you would
like the experience to be for yourself in a similar situation.”
Here are the
top four biggest concerns, negative aspects, and downfalls of the
Internet today:
1. Spam
2. Viruses
3. Privacy
4. Identity theft
Here are the
top 6 ways you can alleviate these concerns for your customers or
website visitors:
1)
Don’t practice Spamming
Sounds simple, but spamming is painfully ubiquitous today. However,
there are people out there who conduct email marketing with integrity.
They have excellent success while avoiding everything that even
hints of spam. They get much better returns than spammers. Why
ever consider spamming again?
2)
Offer an opt-out option – and make it prominent.
Again, this is simple, and we’ve heard it a million times,
but it can’t be repeated enough. Generally speaking, make
the opt-out checkbox next to the email form field.
3)
Have a Privacy statement/page – and make it obvious and
easily accessible
In England, this is a law, and it’s policed. I wish it was
this way everywhere. Place you’re Privacy link somewhere
that a person filling out info on your site can easily see it.
Make the statement comprehensive. And stick to what you state
in the statement, to the letter, or you are inviting legal action.
4)
Take a highlight out of the Privacy statement and place it right
on the web form
For example, directly above your web form, have a statement similar
to this: “[Your Company Name] does not share, sell or give
away email addresses or personal information to any other organization
or company. You can be assured that your email address will never
leave [Your Company Name] and you will never receive spam as a
result of giving us your email address.” Make this in regular
sized font, maybe even bold. The point is to make the user feel
comfortable.
5)
Only ask for the information you need
Why are some forms so torturously long and involved? Do you really
need my nickname, homepage url, age, weight, blood type and sexual
orientation? If your business does not utilize street addresses,
in other words, if you do everything via the Internet, than don’t
ask for people’s street address in a web form. The less
you ask, the less intrusive you are, and the more likely your
site visitors are comfortable. Maybe you take credit cards online,
then of course you’ll need to ask for street addresses,
but if you are conducting a marketing campaign where you plan
to simply email respondents back in the future, just ask for their
email address, name and country/state. More people will fill the
form out and you will alleviate some of the concerns people have
with the Internet today.
6)
Offer tips for maintaining privacy, avoiding identity theft and
stopping viruses
Here are a few tips: 1) Get the latest anti-virus software and
make a link to one of them on your site. 2) Get a credit card
with a low limit that you use exclusively for the web, and only
use that one. 3) Check your credit report twice a year to check
for identity theft and offer a link to an online credit report
service. 4) Don’t open emails from sources you are not familiar
with. 5) Turn off the preview pain in your email application.
6) Pay attention to Microsoft’s updates, download them,
and update your operating system regularly with these updates.
You can provide a link to Microsoft’s updates page as well.
And here is
the crux of this discussion: to truly succeed in any Internet business
or endeavor, like in any other undertaking, applying age old, tried
and true behaviors, traits, and values, is the only answer. The
primary one to apply is the above modified Golden Rule for the 21st
Century Web.
By constantly
striving to alleviate the major concerns of Internet users, we can
create a better virtual world that is lasting and that ultimately
improves the quality of our lives. It will greatly decrease the
chance that the Internet will altogether fail and allow it to continue
to grow to its full potential instead.
Article
by Jason O'Connor
© 2004
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