3 Basic Components of an Ebusiness Website

Since I’m still working on the construction of our new blog this week I thought I’d talk about some of the less talked about items that are important on your blog or website.

Now you’ve probably noticed the header graphic and the site menu. And this week you should see I’ve added a newsletter signup box.

What you may not have noticed is that the footer has grown.

Scroll on down and see what I mean.

Did you see that I’ve added some links and copyright statement?

Now I’m not going to talk about all the things in the footer however I would like to mention 3 of them: Terms of Use, Privacy and Copyright.

Terms of Use

There are other labels like disclaimer, legal, website agreement, etc. that can be used for a Terms of Use page. As a website owner you should always put 1 on your site because it’s a form of protection.

Basically what you’re saying with a page like this is that visitors using your site agree to your Terms of Use and you aren’t liable if something goes wrong.

Now as a legitimate online business person you don’t want anything to go wrong and don’t plan to do or offer anything that could harm your readers however you can’t make a 100% guarantee that it never will.

Privacy

While you don’t want to infringe on the privacy of your site visitors you still need to include a privacy statement for your own protection.

Why?

Well you may be collecting information without realizing it. Do you use tracking software to measure your results? Does your hosting service collect information about who’s visiting your site? Do you have affiliate links (like Clickbank) that send somewhere where cookies are use?

Yes, the importance of your visitor’s privacy is important however you should make them aware that some information is being collected and what it’s being used for. Additionally you should limit your privacy policy to your site and tell them that it doesn’t extend to the sites you are linking to.

Copyright

A Copyright statement is used on your website to protect the content and can be done easily by simply putting at statement like “Copyright Company-Name © 2009 all rights reserved” on your site.

Why should you care about copyright?

While having a copyright statement doesn’t mean someone still won’t steal your work it does give you the right to pursue some actions towards those that do.

Now in case you’re not up to the task of writing your own terms of service or privacy policy I recommend you read mine. At the end of both you’ll find a link to where you can get a free copy that you can customize for your own site.

As an online business person it’s important to learn more about protecting yourself than the average person knows. And right now if you signup to get free access to my Circle of Friends I’ll give you an ebook, “Online Legal Protection,” that contains more information about protecting yourself and your online business. You can get more information about the ebook here.

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. Comments are always welcome.

Tags: are privacy policies needed for a website, basic components of ebusiness website, ebusiness legal protection, examples of privacy policy statements, free terms of use copy, hy should you care about copyright

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