Just about every company and organization today has a website. Pending how long you have been in business you may have had a company website for 10 plus years. That website has probably been thru several redesigns and upgrades while remaining a constant primary marketing tool and/or e-commerce vehicle for your company.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a legal framework that sets guidelines for the collection and processing of personal information of individuals within the European Union (EU). ... GDPR came into effect across the EU on May 25, 2018.
So as a result companies from Europe regardless of where they are doing business have been updating their Privacy Policies and Data Collection policies in order to meet these guidelines. We have received lots of updates from Joomla and Wordpress Extensions in the last few weeks clarifying their changes and compliancy which is a good thing because it means your website is now using software that complies with GDPR…
So how does this affect us here in Australia ?
Well you may be in the Australia but your website is accessible world wide. That means folks from the European Union can visit your website, send you inquiries or purchase products off your website. And the new GDPR guidelines states that if the person visiting your website is in the European Union when they are visiting your website then they are covered by this regulation for general inquiry and data collection. There must be some form of solicitation by the company to European Citizens (in other words enticing EU visitors to provide their information for a specific marketing purpose).
The GDPR guideline also states that ANY collection of financial transaction information is covered and protected by the GDPR regulation so any company selling product worldwide is most likely affected by these new laws.
A good outcome identified to me by wife Vicki who just returned from Europe recently was the speed of websites loading are actually improved by these new laws. When you visit a website and they are bombarding you with visitor tracking software the websites load much slower. Now with the GDPR guidelines websites have less visitor tracking software and thus load quicker!
So what you know? – The GDPR provides better privacy for website visitors and faster websites – that sounds like a pretty good deal to me!
Australian companies that will be most affected by these new regulations are Australian.-based hospitality, travel, software services and e-commerce companies will certainly have to take a closer look at their online marketing practices. However, any Australian company that has identified a market in an EU country and has localized web content should consider reviewing their web operations and what they do with visitor data.
For any company that would like to review your current privacy statements and privacy guidelines be sure to contact us and we can review your specific setup to make sure you are compliant and in good shape with GDPR.
A company can spend a lot of money, time and resources developing a new website. It is an exciting time filled with great expectations as the internet provides a constant supply of users searching for products and services and a great looking website can really help attract customers. It is easy to think that if you get everything right during this design and development phase you are going to be all set in upcoming years.
Social Media has become a dominant force in our world ranging from personal socialization to business marketing. Over the past 5 years or so businesses have been putting more and more effort and resources into using social media in the aim of building their brands and marketing their products and services. It has clearly been a revolution to be able to add a great photo and a small paragraph or two and be able to share with your friends and fans reaching 100’s or sometime 1000’s of people in real time.
Bear Web Design has just launched the new Knoxfield Tennis Club Website which is a custom designed website using Joomla! Content Management System. The website features an active slideshow highlighting recent tennis coaching sessions at the club as well as club juniors working at the 2018 Australian Open.
The site was custom designed using color themes that matched the Club Logo with a slider on the home pages that features action shots from the club. Knoxfield Tennis Club is a club with great history and tradition dating back to 1972 and the website features information about their history all the way up to current competitions, coaching and court hire activities that are available to members and new comers.
To help promote the new website Bear Web Design setup a new Google My Business page and posted the "About" story in Google Posts which will help Knoxfield Tennis Club come up quickly on Google searches for Tennis or Tennis Clubs or Tennis Court Hire in the Knoxfield area.
Bear Web Design has been designing and developing Websites on the Mornington Peninsula since 2017 and is based in Rosebud.
You have a website that has been up and running for a number of years. In actual fact many organizations have had 2-3 generations of websites now a days. It looked great when the website was launched (they always do) but over the years it has become less and less of a focal point in your companies marketing plans. You don’t really know how much traffic is coming to the website (as the reports you used to get stopped coming) and the big part that bothers you is that you don’t seem to get any inquiries from your website any more…
This week Google is introduced a fully redesigned Google+ that puts Communities and Collections front and center. Now focused around interests, the new Google+ is much simpler (which should encourage more and more businsess to start using Google+).
Last month I searching on my mobile when I noticed a tag in results “Mobile-Friendly”. I had never seen it before and recognized immediately what it meant – “Google is telling mobile users what sites are going to be a good experience to visit on your mobile”. Google's Search Engine's aim is to lead you to the best search results but it is now drawing a line in the sand and basically saying if your website is not mobile friendly (no matter how much wonderful content you have on that site) – it is not going to get the all important “Mobile-Friendly” tag. This tag in my opinion will help users decide whether they actually visit your website. And long term I suspect google may even consider listing Mobile-Friendly results first.
