2. Transparency
This is a totally different type of consideration. Now we move past consideration of content into considerations of relationship. You have a relationship with your visitor. This relationship may be brief. This relationship is long-distance. But you have a relationship. And as will all relationships transparency is important.Anyone that you relate to wants to know three basic things:
- Who are you?
- What if anything are you doing to me?
- What will you do with any personal information I give you?
- What is the nature of your business
- Does your site do anything to a visitor's computer
- How does the site intend to use a visitor's personal information
Who are you? -- the nature of your business
Don't pretend to be anything other than you are. If you are a reseller of a product be open and clear about that. In fact, you can use this as a gimmick to create relevant and original content on your web page. If you are a user of the product, discuss that -- give your perspective and recommendation as a fellow user. If you are not a user of the product but are a reseller with unique information gathered from selling and serving customers that do use the product, discuss that -- give your perspective and recommendation based on your experience with others that have used the product. Whoever, or whatever, you are embrace that and use it as your foundation for establishing a successful relationship with a new visitor.We all know that not all the content on our web pages is ours. Be open and honest about that -- i.e. be transparent. If you have sponsored links on your page, present them in such a fashion that visitors can tell the difference between what is yours and what is not. If you are using rss feeds or other widgets to embed content on your website be open and honest about that. Basically if you did not cook the corn bread don't accept the praise as if it was your dish.
Another place where transparency is very important is in pricing and delivery. Do not try to get all cagey when it comes to the "Buy Now" button. Be clear, open, and honest about what the cost will be, what the customer will receive, and when they will receive it -- should they happen to click the "buy it now" button. You can get as tricky as you like -- but don't expect a high quality rating for the such a page.
Something that I personally strongly object to is deceptive (non-transparent) insertion of recurring (subscription) billing. Twice I have found myself in the situation where the money I was paying in Paypal turned out to not be a one-time-only payment. Instead I found an agreement page for scheduling a subscription service. I instantly canceled the transaction and put the company on the "don't visit those scum sucking s.o.b.s ever again" list. Was this true trickier on their part, an oversight in content, or shear incompetence? I will never know because I have no plans of ever visiting that website again.
If a site does offer products that require recurrent billing or subscriptions that is okay. This is a valid type of product. Just be clear, open and honest. Put the necessary information in an obvious location on the page where a typical visitor will find it and be sure to include this information inline with the purchase form.
Another form of open and honest falls under the category of "opt-in". If the visitor is opting in to any kind of mailing list or other form of participation as an adjunct to getting a product you must use a clearly obvious opt-in checkbox on the form.
What if anything are you doing to me? -- Your site's interaction with a visitor's computer.
This consideration is pretty simple and is not actually relevant to normal honest webmasters. If you don't know what this is about, you probably are not and cannot do whatever it is I'm referring to here. In order to do stuff to a visitor's computer you must do it intentionally. What kind of stuff? Well, how about inserting a virus in their computer for one. There are websites that infect visitors with a virus. This is bad and google will give them a bad page ranking. I suppose websites that intentionally infect computers with viruses are not much concerned about page rankings. Not the best example, but it is the category of behavior we are talking about.A less obvious form of intrusion is something like changing a visitor's home page to become your website. Or, perhaps automatically inserting a bookmark for your web page on the visitor's computer. These are not as bad as infesting their computer with a virus -- but they are still a form of intrusion.
There are other forms of intrusion (such as changing a visitor's back button behavior) that rely upon javascript. If you do not know what javascript is, don't worry about accidentally doing any of this. If you do program in javascript, then it would be a good idea to consider every now and then about what, if any, changers you are making to the visitor's computer or browser settings.
What will you do with any personal information I give you? -- how you intend to use a visitor's personal information
Let's start by following the personal information golden rule: only request the personal information required to fulfill whatever service you are providing.This means that if you do not need to ship a product to a visitor, then you do not need their mailing address.
This means that if you do not need to be able to phone a visitor, then you do not need their phone number.
Do you start to see the pattern? If you do not need the info do not request it. Any other reason for requesting additional information would be for data mining.
There are occasions where data mining can be important. For example, you may be very interested in how a customer was referred to your product. If this is the case, feel free to ask "How did you hear about our product?" in whatever contact form you wish. However,... however, be very clear in your privacy policy statement exactly how you intend to use this information. For example, do you intend to store the referral information as part of the customer's record -- tagged to the customer. Or, do you plan on just keeping a running count of referral sources. Whatever you do be transparent -- be clear, be open, be honest.
With the advent of such services as Facebook, it has become increasing necessary to give visitors (members) clear and easy methods to control how their information is used and shared. Recently Facebook was forced to provide more detailed access to information sharing -- so that some information could be shared while protecting other information. This is a growing area of concern for many.
In the Part #3 of this article we discuss the effect of navigation on the quality of a visitor's experience.
