Thursday 7 June 2007

Make your customers feel more secure

The BBC News technology site brings us a report that says people are prepared to pay a little extra for goods if they think that they can trust a web site with their personal information.

While I think the test is a little skewed in that it asked people to use the P3p tool to evaluate the sites. The P3P's tool was designed to show how a site deals with privacy issues and most browsers allows you to see this (althought it is a little hidden). If you tell people that the tool will show how sites deal with privacy, its not surprising that most people will tell you that they feel more secure with a site that passes the P3P tests.

We've been telling clients for years that its important to reassure people about their data and we've seen uplifts in conversion of around 10% on sites such www.projectlearning.net by telling people what happens to their data.

Creating a policy is fairly simple and for most sites and worth the £18 ($35) that sites such as P3P Writer and P3P Edit charge