Web Hosting & Compliance Package Agreement

Our website hosting is second to none. We utilize Convesio hosting on the Google Cloud for all our hosting. Convesio normally offers this same hosting to clients at a starting price of $150 per month so it is a significant discount to our customers to go through us. Here is what is included with our hosting:

• 99.99% Uptime
• Google Cloud Servers
• Cloudflare Enterprise
• Dedicated Cluster Database
• Distributed Container based architecture
• SSD Storage
• Free SSL
• Daily Backups
• Advanced Cloudflare Security Firewall and Monitoring

WordPress websites must be maintained for functionality, speed, and security reasons. With many of our website builds, we use premium plugins that could cost our clients hundreds of dollars per year, but we instead maintain these at an agency license. With our maintenance package, we maintain the website by updating all plugins, updating all WordPress core updates, and updating all theme updates. This is not just a set-it-and-forget-it process. We go in once per week to update all these features and make sure nothing breaks in the process. In the event something does break during updates, we revert to a backup and fix the issues with the update. We do not charge extra for cases where these fixes are required. The reason this service is so important is to maintain the security of your website and keep it functioning properly for your customers.

A Privacy Policy helps website owners comply with privacy laws by providing specific disclosure requirements such as how their website collects, uses, and discloses personally identifiable information and more.

A comprehensive Privacy Policy is required to comply with privacy laws

Today’s modern websites are built to provide a great user experience and motivate prospective customers to reach out and inquire about what you have to offer. This is done through the use of tools such as contact forms, website analytics, and more.

Contact forms ask users to submit their ‘name’ and ‘email’, which are examples of personally identifiable information. When a website uses analytics, it collects each visitor’s IP address and shares that personally identifiable information with third-party data analytics providers. These are just a few examples of the many ways websites collect and share personally identifiable information.

Penalties for non-compliance

The collection of personally identifiable information is regulated under multiple privacy laws. For example, in the US, there are four state privacy laws that can apply to businesses, regardless of their location, and fines for non-compliance start at $2,500 per “infringement” (per website visitor). Each of these privacy laws has specific disclosure requirements that have to be added to your Privacy Policy to be compliant.

On top of that, over two dozen privacy bills have been proposed on a state-level, each with their own unique disclosure requirements and penalties for not complying. Some of these bills will enable citizens to sue businesses (of any size or location) for collecting their personally identifiable information without an up to date and compliant Privacy Policy. Due to the ever-changing nature of privacy laws, we recommend that you not only have a comprehensive Privacy Policy in place but that you also develop a strategy to keep your policies up to date when these laws are amended or when new laws are implemented.

Google requires your website to have a Privacy Policy

Outside of the legal requirements, Privacy Policies are required to use popular third-party tools. For example, a website utilizing Google Analytics is required by Google to have a Privacy Policy. You can find this requirement within section 7 of Google’s Terms of Service: https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/analytics/terms/us/

A Terms of Service Agreement limits the liability of businesses by stating the rules to using the website.

Example disclosures

third-party links: When a website offers links to third-party websites, a Terms of Service can help explain to users that the business is not responsible if a user clicks those links. So, if a third-party link brings a user to a hacked website, the Terms of Service disclosure can help prevent you from being sued.

DMCA Notice: A Terms of Service agreement can also provide what’s called a DMCA notice, which helps prevent a business from being sued by providing contact information in case the website is accidentally using copyrighted material (like images or content).

There are many additional disclosures that a Terms of Service can make, but these two are the most popular and are easy ways to protect your website and your business.

A Disclaimer is a document that helps limit your responsibilities and liabilities for your website in certain circumstances.

Does your website:

Advertise third-party products or services? A Disclaimer will help you protect yourself if a user clicks on the third-party advertisement and gets a virus, is somehow injured by the product or service, or is not happy with the third-party product or service

Sell or display health products? A Disclaimer will help you protect yourself in this case if the health products do not work as they should, do not deliver the results that were expected or if the user gets injured by the health products.

Participate in an affiliate program? An affiliate program is a program whereby you list a particular link on your website and, if the user clicks on that link or purchases the products that the link displays, you receive money from the manufacturer of that product. A Disclaimer will help you comply with the affiliate program’s Terms of Service as most affiliate programs require you to provide a Disclaimer and will help you keep your user’s trust.

Provide health and fitness advice? A Disclaimer will protect you in case the user gets injured after following your health and fitness advice, much like the beginning of those exercise videos that you will watch in January of next year.

Provide information that could be seen by others as legal advice? A Disclaimer will protect you here by stating that there is no attorney client relationship here and that this advice is not legal advice, thus protecting you in case something goes wrong.

Cookies are little snippets of code that get inserted into the user’s browser and device when visiting a website. They can help ensure a website properly functions (aka essential and functional cookies). They can also track website visitors for analytics and advertising purposes (aka marketing cookies).  Several privacy laws require users to provide consent prior to implementing non-essential cookies on their browsers. This is commonly done through a cookie consent banner, which will ask your website visitors to choose their consent settings. It is important to identify what privacy laws apply to you, and determine if you are required to provide a cookie consent solution on your website along with a Cookie Policy further describing the purpose of each cookie.

If you have the budget, we recommend hiring a lawyer that focuses on privacy law to write your website policies, monitor privacy laws, and update your policies when the laws change or when new laws go into effect. If you do not have the budget to hire a privacy lawyer for your website policies, we recommend using Termageddon.

Termageddon is a comprehensive website policies generator and will update your policies when privacy laws change or new privacy laws go into effect, helping you stay compliant and avoid privacy related fines and lawsuits, and they do it at a fraction of the cost of a lawyer. Although Termageddon is a technology company (not a legal services provider), it was founded by a privacy and contracts lawyer and the tool has been recognized as a trusted tech vendor by the largest international privacy organization in the world (iapp.org).

If Termageddon sounds like a good solution for your business, the license costs $9/month, You will have full access to your policies with your own Termageddon account, and you will be notified when new laws go into effect and when your policies are being updated or when new disclosures require additional questions that need to be answered.

You have enough to deal with when running a small business without needing to worry that you might be sued or fined for ADA non-compliance.

And the risk of an ADA lawsuit is real. Since 2018, the number of websites to receive a lawyer letter about web accessibility rose almost 300%, and since the pandemic began, web accessibility lawsuits jumped even higher. In 2020, the number of web-accessibility lawsuits in federal courts rose by almost 300 compared to 2019, to 2,523, and January 2021 alone saw a record 10,983 federal lawsuit filings.

It’s not surprising when you remember that COVID-19 pushed people online like never before. People with disabilities are a lot more ready to take legal action on a non-accessible website when they cannot access the website freely.

Small businesses aren’t small enough to fly under the radar, either. All it takes is one person with disabilities to find your site frustrating and unwelcoming for them to send you a legal letter demanding that you fix the site, and possibly requesting damages as well.

Building web accessibility into your business also helps your business succeed from the very beginning, attracting more visitors and driving more sales.

Improve SEO To Increase Potential Traffic 
Web accessibility is great for SEO, which helps your website rank higher on search engine results pages and gain more organic traffic. Web accessibility tweaks like descriptive alt-tags and anchor tags for links give you the chance to add more meaningful keywords.

Google also penalizes sites that are too difficult to navigate, plus it pays attention to your bounce rate. Your bounce rate shows how long people spend on your site before they bounce off to go elsewhere. If your site isn’t accessible, many people with disabilities will leave it quickly, dragging down your bounce rate.

Improve Reputation To Drive More Sales
Word of mouth is still the most powerful type of marketing, especially now that social media helps spread the word of mouth recommendations to millions.

People with disabilities who land on your site and find that it’s inaccessible, confusing, or totally closed to them aren’t going to be shy about warning other people to avoid it. On the other hand, if your site is a delight for people with disabilities, they’ll recommend it strongly to their friends and relatives and help boost your traffic even further.

Offer A Positive Experience To All Your Customers
A fully accessible site is a pleasure for everyone to use, not just for people with disabilities. When you build your site from the very beginning with web accessibility in mind, you’ll end up with a site that’s simple to navigate, one that has an intuitive purchase journey that encourages more visitors to convert into customers.

When your site is accessible it means your products are easy to find, your content is clearly understandable, and that your checkout process doesn’t throw up obstacles that might lead someone to abandon their cart. It’s a win-win situation.

Finally, your conscience should push you to offer an equal opportunity for people with disabilities. In the US alone, 61 million people live with a disability, including two out of every five adults aged over 65, and there are over one billion people with disabilities worldwide.

These people also need to be able to carry out activities online, like ordering groceries and medications, buying shoes and clothes, and comparing prices and features for services such as mobile hairdressing, garden care, or physical therapy. If your site isn’t accessible, it’s like you’re locking them away from the rest of the world.