Privacy With Website Tracking
Website Tracking is the process of monitoring and collecting essential data related to the digital product while the users are engaged in using them. The purpose of tracking the website varies with different fields.
What Should We Do While Website Tracking?
The use of websites have been an integral part of our lifestyle. So does developing and designing website has increased exponentially. The solution to most of the problems in your work space can now be resolved just by the implementation of software or some digital product.
Though it benefits the world a lot, the work of a developer or designer behind the website is never too easy. The amount of work that has been put depends on how the visitors use and react to the digital product that they have created.
The only to know how well the product is being used by the users is by tracking the website. Tracking website activities has various issues related to the privacy of the users. But still the need of website tracking is inevitable.
Let's have a look over what is the need of website tracking, how to protect the privacy of the users and much more through this article.
What is website tracking?
Simply talking about tracking website, it is the process of monitoring and collecting essential data related to the digital product while the users are engaged in using them. The purpose of tracking the website varies with different fields.
Generally it is done to get the maximum productivity with the digital product. Working remote, it's hard to know how user's are experiencing in the site and the working of the website can be monitored only by using website tracking features.
The need of website tracking has got various benefits on what data that we need,
1. Know about the customers: The visitors thoughts and opinions matters more for the success for any product. In case of website, you can know how the users are feeling only by knowing their behavior and actions inside the website.
2. Track the issues: It is not easy to always manually monitor the activities in the product. So elements will be of great use and some might not be. Find out how the users are using the product by tracking the activities that is performed within.
3. Fix bugs: A major problem that is faced with digital product is the presence of bugs or any other issues. Checking all the log files to trace out the bug is quite a difficult task. Instead if you track the website the job gets done faster and easier.
Why users privacy matters?
People tend to rely on website for most of their activities. To get the benefits of the website or any digital product, they blindly agree to all the terms and conditions without actually knowing what they exactly mean.
The website holders or the developers may sometimes sell the collected data of the users to some third party, which questions the security and privacy of the visitors. The security, privacy and transparency of the website is also important for visitors to use the product.
You can use various factors and features to make the users feel comfortable with the website they are using. Only if the users start trusting the product, they will wish to use the product further. To build trust it is important to secure their privacy and data.
What are some website tracking regulations?
1. GDPR:
GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is a regulation that is pertained to the EU. This regulation greatly focus the privacy and human rights of the users and customers in the digital platform.
GDPR focuses on,
- Asks for consent from the users before proceeding with website tracking.
- Transparency and information related to website tracking should be known to the users.
- Documenting the data collected should be done only on the users consent.
- The consent free must be free and not a forced one.
- The collected data shouldn't be shared with the third parties.
2. CCPA:
CCPA (California Customer Privacy Act) is the law that is to protect the privacy and security of the users from the region of California, United States. It regulated the personal information of the users when they are using a website.
Personal information that can be collected under CCPA are,
- Name, Location, IP addresses
- Browsing and search history
- Information related to purchase
CCPA also obtains the consent of the users before providing the information while tracking the website.
Do Not Track Legislation:
DNT is the regulation that helps or regulates the privacy by which the users can choose whether they can be tracked or not when they are using any digital product. The legislation prevents the website developers from any data that is not under the norms.
The data that is prohibited from collecting includes,
- Religion and race related to the user.
- Medical history of the individual
- Details related to income and other financial records.
- Biometric data like fingerprints, eye scan and others.
- Location related information.
What are the other metrics to protect user's privacy?
Website tracking is done whenever any website is opened. Thinking about the process of tracking is legal or not, it is depends on the data that we collect. Website tracking is legal until the information collected is inside the bounds of maintaining the user privacy.
1. Track the data that is needed:
While tracking the website, you can track various information out of it. Some data that is being collected may also violate the privacy of the users. In that case, the developers should track and collect the data that is needed.
2. Use the privacy features:
The tools that you use for tracking the website activities will have certain privacy features. You can let the users choose what data they can share with us and store them. These additional privacy features can be selected by the willingness of the users.
3. Choose the Do not track option:
Make the Do not tract option transparent. In case the users doesn't feel like sharing or being tracked they can select the do not track option, which stops the process of website tracking when they are working.
4. Explain the privacy policies of the tools:
There are various features and tools that can be used to track the website, which has various policies and norms. In order for the users to feel comfortable, you need to explain all the regulations and policies related to the tool before the website tracking process.
5. Let user clear data:
The tracking starts the instance the user enter the website. They move from element to element and page to page, and every actions data is collected and stored. The users may feel certain data to be deleted. By letting them delete the data they don't want to share, you can gain their trust for your digital product.
Privacy with ReplayBird:
Learning about all the privacy related issues and the importance of privacy while website tracking the next step is to find out the tool to track by abiding to all the regulations and norms. The best option will be opting ReplayBird.
The features of ReplayBird does have various features to help us in website tracking,
- Session recordings
- Heatmaps
- Usability testing
- Funnel analytics
- Behavior analysis and much more.
Try out all the features and choose the best one for your product.
Get started now with ReplayBird.
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