Is Your Website Putting Your Home Services Business At Risk for Fines and Legal Action?
Be Confident You Are In Full Compliance With Spartan Digital’s FREE Website Audit
Whether your home services business website is brand new or is ready for a redesign, your goals behind creating the site were clear from the start:
- To attract quality prospects to your site
- To drive leads, bookings, and sales
- To grow your brand in your local market
- To deliver a superior customer experience
Like most home services business owners, the last thing on your mind was to achieve compliance. However, in today’s world where lawmakers and regulatory bodies are constantly policing the internet, being in compliance is no longer a recommendation. It’s an absolute requirement.
How Choosing to IGNORE Compliance on Your Website Could Cost You In Multiple Ways
If your business has been around since the early days of website development (1990s – early 2000s), you benefitted from the legal grey area of website compliance. Because of vague laws, cookie-cutter lawsuits, and inexpensive out-of-court settlements, website compliance back then was the wild, wild west. Few rules. Fewer consequences.
Those days are long gone. Today, the Department of Justice and the FTC treat non-compliance and deceptive practices as serious federal violations. Businesses today can no longer hide behind excuses, such as, “We’re just a small business.” Or “We are local, and don’t serve international customers.” Or even, “I didn’t know.”
Fact is, no matter the size, location, or industry of your business, non-compliance can negatively impact your business, your website, and even you personally. Here are a number of ways you may inadvertently be setting yourself up for problems when it comes to your website:
Non-Compliance Affects Your Wallet and Time
Out-of-Pocket Costs — Through demand letters and lawsuits, business owners can be personally responsible for thousands of dollars in plaintiff lawyer fees and court costs.
Time Consumption — Navigating a DOJ investigation or settling a lawsuit demands hours of your personal time. That’s less time you have to run your business or spend time with your family.
Your Business Can Be A Target
Massive Fines and Settlements — If your business is found non-compliant, civil penalties can reach up to $75,000 for the first violation and $150,000 for subsequent violations.
Loss of Revenue — By failing to honor data privacy rules, you actively exclude a large segment of your prospects and customers.
Forced Retrofitting — Through court orders, you may be required to completely rebuild or retrofit your entire website to meet accessibility or privacy standards. And you must do it quickly.
Your Website And Reputation Are At Risk
Brand Damage and Loss of Trust — After enduring public lawsuits, bad press, and negative reviews, your online reputation can be damaged or completely ruined.
Operational Injunctions — Courts can actually mandate that your site ceases data collection. Even worse, they can completely shut your website down.
How to Best Protect Your Business from Fines and Lawsuits
The absence or improper use of cookie banners are one of today’s most widespread website violations. While seemingly simple, cookie banners are the source of hefty fines, aggressive lawsuits, and business-impacting penalties. So, what exactly are these banners, and how can you ensure you’re in compliance?
First, anytime you interact with a website, it may drop small text files called “cookies” onto your computer or device. These cookies enable the site to remember your login details and your preferences. They also allow the site to track your online behavior for analytics or advertising. This is why when you search for “noise-cancelling headphones” at two o’clock in the morning, for the next week you’re bombarded with ads featuring noise-cancelling headphones.
As the owner of a website, you must alert your visitors about how your site collects their data using cookies and to ask for consent before tracking them across the internet. You do this through a simple pop-up notice that appears when you first visit a website. That’s the cookie banner.
Now, designing a cookie banner or notice on your website seems simple. Just inform your website users that you utilize cookies, right? It’s not that easy. Most cookie notices may appear compliant but fail under scrutiny. While specifics regarding cookie banner content vary by law and region, most frameworks expect the following content be present:
- What personal data is collected and how it’s collected
- The categories of data being collected
- The purposes for data processing
- The third parties with which data is shared
- The types of cookies and trackers in use
- The users’ privacy rights
- How users can manage to exercise those rights
By creating a cookie banner for your website that hits all of these points, not only will you meet legal requirements to avoid fines and lawsuits, you’ll also optimize your opt-in rates.
Gain Peace of Mind with Spartan Digital’s Free Website Audit
If you currently don’t have a cookie banner on your site, it’s only a matter of time before you get a notice or a fine. However, even if you do have a cookie banner, chances are it may lack the proper language or implementation to ensure compliance. On the other end of the spectrum, your cookie notice may be too aggressive that it scares away prospective customers.
After designing and improving thousands of websites in most every home services business, Spartan Digital Solutions knows just what you need to be in compliance while maximizing your marketability and opt-in rates.
Don’t risk dealing with massive fines, lawsuits, and penalties when it comes to your website. The Spartan Digital team will review your entire website, including your cookie banner, free of charge. Request your FREE Website Audit today.