Capturing information
The chosen method
During the production of the website in unit 5 I created a “contact us” page to be a central part of the navigation ‘cycle’. Currently this is not functional. So any data that is submitted into this form is lost. This is not acceptable legally and from the company’s point of a view, it’s a travesty. This information could be processed lawfully in a number of useful ways, including for e-marketing purposes.
Another observation I have made as the web manager is that the most popular pages of the web site, in terms of ‘hits’, are the blog's pages. So it would be most profitable, if lawful, to either direct visitors to a page where they can submit information about themselves or actually have a form on one of these pages.
The blog is already using its popularity to divulge some information about certain visitors, more specifically those that comment on a particular article posted by Ryan. At the moment before someone is able to submit a comment they must enter a valid e-mail address and their name. However, this is purely for validation purposes to stop spam bots from clogging up article comments.
But could this information be processed and used for other uses, e-marketing for instance? The answer is a definite no! According to the Data Protection Act information must be “processed for limited purposes”, that means we can only legitimately contact them regarding the specific comment that they have made and not regarding any other matter. I am of the opinion that this is entirely reasonable as well as being UK law that we must abide by. We don’t want potential clients to get the impression that they are being spammed!
The privacy policy
To encourage more users to disclose more information about themselves we have to be upfront and honest about what we will be doing with it. We will firstly have to adjust our privacy policy, which currently states:
“We will not store any personal data about you - any surveys that may appear will only be for our own use in ascertaining your preferences and thoughts on this site. Any data collected will be destroyed once it has been analysed.”
This will have to be deleted and changed after we have fully implemented and tested the data capture method so we can tell visitors exactly what we are doing with their information.
What action I have chosen to take...
So then, so far I have established that I must make the contact us form functional and try to make use of the popularity of the blog's index page to entice users to give us useful information, more particularly, visitor’s e-mail addresses.
If the web site is able to capture visitor’s e-mail addresses using a form, then with the help of a fit for purpose scripting mechanism it should be able to instantly send an auto-response to the form filler’s address detailing exactly what imformation they have submitted to PSD.
Therefore, as well as using the “contact us” page to divulge information I have chosen to make use of the ‘What does Ryan say?’ section of the blog's index page. I will add to this section a small form with only one input field for visitor’s e-mail addresses. Above the form I will have the sentence: “To receive regular updates about products and projects enter your e-mail address below.” This method is legally conscious because it clearly states the company’s processing intention.
The method's use for e-marketing
Now that I have chosen the method of capture, I must justify the web site's use of the data that it will be receiving. Users who input their email address into the form positively want to recieve regular updates about the company's progress. So every month a newsletter will be generated and sent to each subscriber. Inside the newsletter will be excerpts from all of Ryan's latest blog posts (with links to the full articles), as well as information about the company's latest products and projects. This e-marketing will hopefully effect the number of clients and contracts the company gets through the web site for good.
On the following page the reader will see how I have researched, designed and implemented the chosen methods (the e-mail capture and the contact us form) successfully.
Click next to continue...