While browsing through the internet, did you notice that things have changed lately? Every website seems very cautious when it comes to privacy; they are always asking for storing cookies and pretty much annoying us with those approvals that we accept just to get it out of the way to grab the content we came after. It happens too frequently to be a coincidence, doesn’t it? That is caused by a new cop in its cyber suit called GDPR.
GDPR is short for General Data Protection Regulation with a goal to construct a data privacy law for embracing privacy as an elemental human right, to manage all personal data accordingly, and to give more control to individuals on the data they provide in terms of data processing and usage.
The idea of GDPR emerged as a counterattack to misusing personal data of users in retail, social media, and finances.
A general misconception is that GDPR applies only to EU member countries, but the truth is that any website that can be visited by a user from the European Union is affected by GDPR.
In other words, everybody is affected by it, and the terms they established must be respected… if you don’t want to pay enormous fines, of course. If your website is not compliant, you will firstly receive a warning, which you should take very seriously, followed by a reprimand. If you still didn’t resolve the problems, you will receive a suspension of activities regarding data analysis. And to top it all off, a financial penalty of up to 4 percent of your annual global revenue, or 20 million euros (they will pick the greater one, so you know they mean serious business).
Don’t get petrified, because being compliant isn’t that hard to achieve. You’ll always be on the safe side if you stick to these rules:
- Enable easy access to users of their data, and provide it in a simple format.
- Allow users to change or delete their personal data if they wish to.
- Enable users to limit the usage of their personal data.
- Allow users to choose whether their data will be included in analytics or any type of marketing purposes.
If you want to strengthen your compliance, you can install a few plugins, such as WPForms, that will help you out to reach it, and you can always make a test here to check if your website is following all of the rules. When it first appeared, GDPR caused mixed opinions in the community (mostly negative) considering the phenomenon of unfair competition, the inability of small businesses to handle it, cyber-extortion risks, and simply too much hustle and rules that will represent another headache that we have to deal with. But, it’s not all that bad if you consider the positive sides that you, especially as a blogger, can benefit from.
1. A cleaner and a more organized workplace
Being messy and unorganized is pretty much a stamp of a blogger. You have more than a few things to think about, and one of them is definitely not tidying it up just for the fun of it. But when you are doing a detailed check of your data, it’s a good possibility that you will find a lot of errors that you should’ve deleted regardless of the GDPR compliance.
When you put the logs and the registers together and compose an overview of your entire work, you will get a much clearer picture of your progress, where is your current standing point and how do you want to proceed.
Also, identifying unnecessary data and removing it will give your website a speed boost, which is always desirable, and a neat, more organized place to work always brings better results.
2. A safer environment
If you hear a website suffered a data breach, would you trust them with that sensitive information? I’m pretty sure not, which is why safety is so important and why you need to maintain a positive reputation. You need to continuously build trust and reliability with your customers to ensure that you are always their main contact when it comes to making business, and compliance will help you get one step closer to those goals.
3. Taking your marketing to a higher level
Marketing under GPDR’s influence has developed into being more accurate and structured towards the users.
Matching your datasets in a GDPR compliant way will improve your correlation with the customers.
All businesses went through a data audit that gives you a marketing advantage in terms of displaying your content to users who are more interested in your services, and with less money invested, you will be able to get a superior outcome.
4. More data space that costs less
Data inventory software and legacy applications that are not significant to your work need to be removed to comply with the rules. That process will undoubtedly lower the costs of data storage by centralizing the data contained in incompatible formats. By doing so, data maintenance costs will plummet, and you will operate in a much cleaner setting with more space available to put to your attention towards the relevant goods.
Conclusion
GPDR has brought a new set of rules into online businesses, but they are present for good reasons.
You may be the type that doesn’t prefer to follow the rulebook, but in this instance, it is inevitable and profitable if you look at the bigger picture. It will drastically improve your security and make it safer for both you and your users, after making a profound clean up, you will have a much neater and more organized workplace.
It can improve your marketing, data localization, increase the confidence of your consumers and build a bond of loyalty and ultimately take your work to the next level.