Polls of Internet users reveal that their fear about how their information is used is still a primary concern. According to the GVU Tenth WWW User Survey (October, 1998 - the latest available online), http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/user_surveys :

- 71.4% of the respondents agreed that there should be new laws to protect privacy.
- 84.3% of the respondents disagreed with the idea that online content providers have the right to resell their information to others.
- Only 38.7% of respondents always accept cookies.
- Although 75% of online buyers were willing to use a credit card to make an online purchase, 79.5% were "somewhat" or "very" concerned about security on the Internet. Clearly, we need to do what we can to make our customers feel safe and secure in all of our relationships with them. This becomes even more critical as we move more to one-to-one marketing and personalizing our sites based upon the information that we have learned from our customer.

Some users want ultimate anonymity. Other users do not mind as much providing their information or having their information used to be sent offers from other companies. But even these more casual visitors want to have the choice of whether and how their information should be used. Online customers want to have control over their personal data. Your privacy policy should reflect your customers' desires.

Advantages Of An Effective Privacy Policy

- Decrease customers' fear over providing personal information.
- Make your online users more inclined to do business with a higher level of confidence.
- Encourage your customers' participation in your one-to-one web marketing and long-term relationship building efforts. What makes site personalization valuable to customers also makes customers uneasy--providing personal information. A personalization system will not bring its vast benefits to you or the customers if your customers won’t use it. Personalizing a website has benefits for both the users and Web marketers--users receive personalized service and marketers learn more about their customers as well as finding out what is working or not working on their website.
- Increase the accuracy or truthfulness of the information given by the customers. Again, personalization based on false data is useless, and perhaps harmful.
- Gain their trust - the bottom line necessary for doing business together.

How To Develop Your Privacy Policy
What sort of information should your privacy policy include?

- Tell them what information you collect from your customer.
- Tell them how the information will be used. Will you use it to send newsletters? Offers? From your company only? Or from other companies as well?
- Tell them whether you will ever provide customer information to a third party, and if so, under what circumstances, and for what uses.
- Give the customer the choice whether you can use the information for your purposes.
- Give the customer the choice whether the web site may give his or her name or other information to a third party. There is debate whether you should adopt an "opt-in" policy where the default option is to not give permission or the "opt-out" policy where the permission is granted unless the customer actively denies the permission or elects to be taken off e-mail lists. Some users are very comfortable with "opting out" while other users prefer to "opt in" and have the ultimate choice. We believe in the "opt-in" policy. You may feel otherwise. Knowing your customers will help you determine what is best for your site.
- Tell them about the SSL encryption and how that makes the use of the credit card safe. Mention their credit card information company guarantees as well.

Other Resources
To get your creative juices flowing for creating your privacy policy, you can use the Privacy Policy samples offered by several trusted sources on the Internet. The following are a few suggestions:

The DMA (Direct Marketing Association) has created a Privacy Policy Questionnaire which is an online tool to create your own privacy policy for your web site. Visit their website (which has changed since this article was written.)
TRUSTe http://www.etrust.org has a "Model Privacy Statement" at http://www.truste.org/privacy_statement.php
Use The Better Business Bureau's Sample Privacy Policy as a template. http://www.bbbonline.org/privacy/sample_privacy.asp

Educate the Customer
Educate your customers about the specific benefits and services they will receive when they provide personal, preference and interest information. Some of the benefits that you could convey include:

- Choice. Web services based on online profiling give users the choice of creating a web page, or of receiving information or advertising that is according to their own declared preferences or interests. When designing your online profiling methods, consider letting customers have more control over their profile. Don't just let them build it, let them also modify it. Or, let them maintain multiple profiles.
- Time savings. Let your customers know that you will save them time. If they build their own profile, your web site can save them time when they are searching for products, services or information that matches their unique needs.
- Personalized service. Your customers want to know that you are meeting their unique needs instead of pushing products or services that are not of interest to them. Let them know you are looking out for their best interests… literally.
- Extras. Some sites "bribe" the users with rewards, such as premium content, to give information to be used with the one-to-one marketing process.

Use Plain Language
Use plain language (avoiding legalese) to enable customers to quickly understand how you collect and use their personal information. Your customers will trust you more and your sales will increase.