ePrivacy and marketing

The building blocks of Compliance e: stonearch@protonmail.com t: 01706 559 022

Stone Arch
Data Protection

UK GDPR Expertise You Can Rely On.

Website Compliance and Marketing

Do not let poor data protection practices undermine your marketing activities or leave you at risk.

We can assist you to host a website, advertise your services and conduct marketing in a manner which is data protection compliant. We can support you to collect personal data to be used in marketing, establish when you do and do not need to obtain consent, draft consent forms, ensure you have the right privacy notice information in place, and manage an unsubscribe process within your communications.

We can also help get your cookie compliance right, by supporting you with cookie requirements, drafting cookie policies, notifications and cookie options.

Website compliance makes us part of our recommended five steps to compliance - please see below for further information about this aspect of your compliance journey. And don't forget to reach out to ask us about our "5 Steps to Compliance" course!

Website compliance: Into the detail...

Perceived difficulty

🟡 Medium (due to the expertise required to ensure cookie compliance)

Why is this important?

Many people first interact with your business through your websites. As a result, websites frequently collect personal data through forms, cookies, analytics tools, marketing technologies, event registrations and customer interactions.

Website compliance ensures that personal data is collected and used lawfully and transparently. It also helps ensure that customers and visitors understand the choices available to them regarding their personal information.

Because websites are publicly accessible and often process large volumes of data, compliance issues can quickly become visible to customers, regulators and competitors.

What are the risks if we get it wrong?

Poor website compliance can result in:

Collection of personal data without appropriate transparency.
Use of cookies or tracking technologies without valid consent.
Excessive collection of personal information.
Complaints from users.
Regulatory investigations or enforcement action.

Website issues are often highly visible because they affect large numbers of users and can be identified by external parties.

How is website compliance achieved?

Website compliance should be considered before a website, web form or new functionality goes live, but its never too late to fit compliance to your existing website.

A typical review will look at several key areas:

What personal data is collected.
Whether that data is genuinely required.
What information users are provided with.
How cookies and tracking technologies operate.
Whether appropriate consent is obtained where required.

It is also important to consider the overall user experience. Privacy information should be easy to locate and understand. Cookie consent mechanisms should provide meaningful choices rather than simply encouraging users to accept everything.

Your website should have as a minimum:

A cookie notice, which explains what cookies you use and why.
A cookie pop-up that appears when people visit your site and collects consent for non-essential cookies. Top tip: turn off non-essential cookies to avoid this step!
Privacy notices attached to any hosted contact form or newsletter sign-up.
Background consent (or an alternative lawful basis for processing) if you are using photographs or reviews of people who are identifiable. Top tip: use AI to generate images of people and anonymise your reviews to avoid this step!

Need help?

Contact Stone Arch Data Protection to help with any of the above steps, or to conduct a quick review of your existing website.