blog.

Only 2 weeks to go!

On 26th May 2012 all UK websites must demonstrate compliance with the EC ePrivacy Directive. A few weeks ago we sent you our guide on what it means for you and your web site. For more information on this check out our: Cookies; Best Practice Guide. 

Cookie Audit

If you haven't contacted us in regards to a Cookie Audit please feel free to do so. We will undertake this before the 26th May 2012 (charge may apply), report on the cookies which exist on your site and our recommendations on the next steps to ensure your website is demonstrating compliance. 

For more information contact us on: cookies@thisisfocus.co.uk

We were approached by a client recently to advise on setting up a Facebook presence for a organisation whose target market is vulnerable children.  Hence the brief provided was not a normal Facebook presence and had a strict criteria list.

The strict criteria list related to maintaining privacy and reducing any associated risks involved in using the social network to communicate with these children.

We spent some time reviewing this list as we had experience of setting up Facebook pages for other companies and organisations whose main aim was to promote themselves through Facebook. This project’s aim was promoting the organisation BUT also ensuring communication from users was minimal.  This was something which we knew would be difficult, as this was going against what Facebook was designed for.

During our investigation we set up an array of pages, groups and profiles to understand how each would work with these key requirements. We reported back to the project team our thoughts and findings which included the challenges, issues and advantages each of these options offered.

Once an agreement was made on a preferred method, we worked on reducing the risk associated with this option. We successfully built up a test page which met the criteria list and we also identified some risks which were not considered initially by the project team to ensure our solution had the lowest risks possible. The project group are going to implement our findings once they have recieved sign off.

Social media was THE buzz word for 2011 and a lot of companies, groups and organisations are jumping on the bandwagon without thinking about the how, where and why? We’ve developed social media strategies for a number of clients this year to ensure they understand the reasons why they are doing something and the best way to use social media for their goals and aims. 

For those less techie-savvy amongst us browser cookies are not the chocolate chip variety but a small piece of text stored on your computer by your web browser. You probably know them best as those helpful little things that remember your address and phone number when you’re filling in a form. Cookies are hugely helpful for web based businesses it is a well known fact that at each stage of a signup process you lose customers. On average each domain has around 30 cookies.

The new EU privacy laws which come into effect on May 25th mean that web sites will have to obtain explicit consent from users to store this information. This means slapping large warnings about cookies on your site, which could scare away your customer making them think you’re a privacy nightmare. Some critics say that this will harm EU start ups pushing customers towards more US based sites that don’t have these privacy warnings.

The best advice for your business is to work out the best way to get consent to use cookies so you can continue to use them; some browsers are already working on ‘opt-in’ settings to meet the EU requirements. If you need advice on the best course of action we are happy to chat it through with you, just give us a buzz!