Category: “Just Nancy”

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Buying a Business Requires an Online Review by an Experienced Expert

Be on target and knowledgeable before you buy.

The digital age has complicated what to review before buying a business. I have one entrepreneur client who bought a business and found out later that the website had no valid logins and is infected with malware.

Additionally, the webmaster was trying to sell the business without the real business owner’s knowledge. Contracts for domain transfer and hosting had already been signed with the webmaster before the real owner stepped in.

A review of statistics, source code, and logins for social media, the web server, and the website should all be validated before a final price is negotiated.  If you know that the website has malware, has been banned on Google, and that there is no way to login or transfer the domain to you will definitely impact the price you decide to offer for an online business.

Make sure that you know before you buy! My firm does offer expert review services by the hour at a rate of $90 per hour to review these important items before you make a purchase. Contact us for more information.

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An Update on the EU’s GDPR for Privacy

An Update on the EU’s GDPR for Privacy
An Update on the EU’s GDPR for Privacy

Since I last wrote about the privacy updates that are mandated by the EU to cover website traffic on American websites by EU nationals, much has happened.

First, clients who thought that they did not want to update their privacy policy or implement cookie approval for website statistic tracking have changed their minds.

Our team has been very busy updating websites to beef up the transparency of the privacy policy, reveal clearly what is being tracked on websites, offering ways to opt out of tracking, and installing cookie approval scripts on websites.

Several clients have shared their thoughts with us on why the sudden change. Some are listed below.

“I do feel lucky about not getting caught, but also want to be safe.”

“I’ve just had a lawyer call me and I feel like I need immediate action on the privacy updates as I don’t want to end up in court on a new matter.”

“I think it is stupid to do, but I am getting inundated with privacy policy updates from everyone that I do business with, that maybe I do need to do something to my website.”

As for me, my perspective is that it is not expensive or hard to do the implementation to be in compliance with the GDPR. I am risk adverse and feel that eventually the US will institute some controls so we will be ahead of the game by changing our own websites now.

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Not Implementing GDPR – Are You Feeling Lucky?

It is not hard to be in compliance with the EU's GDPR.
It is not hard to be in compliance with the EU’s GDPR.

So far only one of my US based webmaster clients has taken notice of the changes needed to their website to be EU compliant with the new GDPR rules on EU citizen privacy.

This is what I hear from clients:

  1. I do not sell in the EU so this does not apply to me.
  2. I don’t care if I have EU visitors. No one will prosecute me.
  3. I guess I am feeling lucky and so am not doing anything.

Let me demystify something please.

  1. It is not complicated to make these changes.
  2. There are free cookie handling scripts for this.
  3. Your privacy policy needs just a few minor changes.

For most clients we work with, the implementation would be under one hour and the cookie acceptance script is free unless you are on https and then expect to pay about $100 for the script.

The site update is not obtrusive, yet gives you protection. Although our own website does not get a lot of traffic from the European Union, factor 30 day traffic times 12 months. That number is high enough to think twice about saying no one will find me out.

One of our clients who said he did not want us to implement the updates, and said he was feeling lucky. But later sent an email and said go ahead and make the changes. He was feeling lucky but also wanted to be safe.

From my point of view, making this relatively simple update for most sites is a no brainer and I am baffled as to why more US business sites are not updating to this important change.

Being transparent with website visitors is important, not hard to do, and is the right thing to do. That is what the EU’s GDPR is all about.