Having a website is a lot like having a business. It’s something you own, build with time and care for like it was your only child. At the same time, a website can also come with the liabilities and frustrations of a real business — especially if you are selling products or services through your site or making money.
Just like many businesses have policies in place, you site should have them as well. However, most site owners have no idea what policies they need, how to create them and how to make sure they match with the content and purpose of their site. Another frustration is that if you want to hire a lawyer to create a professional iron clad and customized policy written up for your site. This in itself could cost thousands of dollars!
Good news! There are better alternatives when it comes to creating necessary policies for your site, and I’m not talking about going to your favorite site and stealing theirs! While this may work for some sites and never become an issue, should anything arise in the future you will want to make sure your policies line up with the same practices that are happening when someone visits your site.
Website Policies is an easy to use service that creates free and customized policies for your site. Best of all, you can set one up for your site in just a few minutes time and it’s dead simple/
Website Policies – How to Create a Site Policy in Minutes
Rarely do we find websites or online services that actually back up their statements and offer what they say they will, or come with the ease that anyone can use it. That is what you will get with Website Policies, as it’s a simple series of questions built around the structure of your site and how user information is accessed. After pulling all of this information together, Website Policies will then provide you with a downloadable site policy that you can post to your site right away.
As mentioned earlier, it’s easy to visit one of your top competitor sites and steal their policies. Theoretically, all you would need to do is replace their site name and information with yours. However, as I also mentioned, this really isn’t going to work if you want to protect your site should an issue arise in the future. Every site collects and uses user data differently, which is why most policies are created in the first place.
With Website Policies it’s easy to create a policy for your site that matches up with your site practices because each user is walked through a questionnaire, which breaks down the fine details of your site. Depending on the policy you are creating, these questions will vary. The important thing is that you answer them all to your best of knowledge so you policy well repents your site.
To get started, let’s cover each of the policies offered through WebsitePolicies.com.
Privacy Policy
A privacy policy is one of the most common policies that you will need to have on your site. Such policies are required on any website or blog that “gathers, uses, discloses and manages a customer or client’s data.”. Not only does Google look at your site want to see a privacy policy in place, most sites are also required by law to protect the privacy of your customer or client. Even if your site isn’t selling anything, a site visitor still falls under the same guidelines.
To get started with the process of creating a privacy policy, all you need to do is visit the Website Policies site, click Privacy Policy and start walking through their site policy questionnaire.
The beginning process of each policy wizard will start off with your basic site information (such as location, site name and URL) and if your site is used for commercial purposes
The next set of questions to create your privacy policy will be more focused on the content and data collection on your site, such as if users can create accounts, which advertisers are on your site, how cookie data is collected… and more.
The good news is that the process will only take a few minutes time and once you are done with the process, you likely won’t need to create or update your policies for quite a while.
After finishing the questionnaire, you will then be able to create an account with Website Policies and download your policy for use on your own site. The policy can be downloaded in HTML code, plain text or even hosted through WebsitePolicies.com for a quick reference.
Terms of Service Policy
Terms of Service policies are in place to describe the rules a site visitor much follow should they wish to continue using your site. Nearly every website you visit will have one of these policies in place, and by continuing to use that website, you are in agreement with their TOS policy. A Terms of Service policy is also in place to legally protect both the website and the website user by clearly outlining those rules.
As for creating a Terms of Service policy, the process is nearly identical to the one above. The main difference is that you will have a unique set of questions to answer to help create a TOS policy to match your site.
Such questions asking during the Terms of Service policy creation process are whether users are allowed to create and publish content to your site or if your content has an age restriction. Another difference is the ability to add multiple disclaimers within your policy. This option might be used if you have different areas to your site or if you want to include statements about indemnification, dispute resolution, intellectual property rights and prohibited uses.
Refund Policy
A Refund policy should be in place for all e-commerce driven site or if you sell any products or service. This would also be true for online marketers and bloggers who might be selling consulting services, ebooks, guides, courses or anything where a transaction takes place. Even if your “transaction provider” (like Paypal) has policies on their sites, you will still want to have these for your own site as well.
Not only will having a Refund policy on your site keep it legally compliant, it will also allow your audiences and customers to better understand how, why and when a customer may request a refund. For example, most online stores have a 30 or 60-day money back guarantee, however, without a Refund policy in place you would never know that. Within the Refund policy you will also find information about money back guarantees, transaction fees, shipping costs and customer service.
Again, Website Policies makes the process amazingly simple, as they provide all of the questions and you simply need to select the right answer that matches your site.
The Cost to Create a Website Policy
Every website needs to have a privacy, terms of service and refund policy (if selling) in place. The only question is how each site will generate a policy to represent their site.
For websites that are for informational or personal use, you can create your website policies through WebsitePolicies.com for free. Visit their site, walk through the policy creation process, add it to your site and then you are done! Each policy comes with a free license and all that’s required of you is to leave the credit backlink to WebsitePolicies.com in place.
For commercial websites there is a $ 14.95 one-time fee for creating site policies and obtaining a commercial license. Any site that sells products or services would fall under being commercial. If you are unsure if your site is commercial, the policy wizard on the site will let you know.
You never know when an unexpected disaster may strike! Take the time to create a professional policy for your site today.
The post Create a Privacy Policy in Minutes with Website Policies appeared first on Zac Johnson.