Yes, it is a real pain, this new GDPR privacy law that is enforced after May 25th, 2018 and that is regulating how customers are protected not just in the European Union, but with every company worldwide that deals with customers in the European Union.
Since many companies have ignored the changes that are now coming into effect, lots of people are overwhelmed and surprised that even single-one-man companies can be sued to up to 20 Million Euros or 4% of their annual income.
However, the good thing is that following the best practices for the new GDPR privacy law is also a big benefit from your language school website because it will help you to rank better on the Search Engines. And earn a lot more trust from current and new potential language school students.
It was already like this that websites that display a proper set of Terms and Conditions, Privacy Policy, Cookies Policy, and other legal pages that those have received a better trust factor from the search engines and from customers alike.
By the way: now is also a good time to update the footer of your website to add the current year to your copyright notice to show that your website is current and up to date.
What else do you need to do to make your language school website compliant?
Then what next?
A very good checklist for the new privacy law is https://gdprchecklist.io where you find all necessary elements of following and applying everything needed in the next weeks, months and years to come.
Because the new privacy law is actually a process and not just adding a few new legal pages (which is actually a good start!) and then you are done. This whole new privacy law will force and help you to clean up your website, it will be faster and if you do it right it will make you get ahead of your competition in the search engines against those who are too lazy to implement all the new rules and regulations.
Please be advised that we are not lawyers and that it is probably a smart thing to consult a lawyer that knows the specifics of your country. This article was written to give you an overall orientation and we are not liable for anything that you do that is based on our information here. A lawyer won’t be a replacement for understanding and applying the necessary practices yourself. But it is always a good thing to have one, just in case.
Updating your websites and following the new GPDR privacy laws will be a good thing as it will help you in the long term to gain more customers and help you to stand out how you deal with your language students in respect to their privacy. People value their privacy and how they get treated. This is much more than improving bad customer service and following common-sense on how to deal with private data of your language students.
Like ourselves here languageschoolsuccess.com, this new privacy law is a new journey that gives you a great chance to re-evaluate your position on how you can serve your customers better. Protected customers are happier customers after all.