GDPR compliance is mandatory for businesses. If an eCommerce site is not GDPR compliant, it can invite profound legal complexities. Businesses need to understand GDPR and comply with the same for customers’ safety and ensure a long-term relationship with customers. GDPR can be confusing for WordPress and WooCommerce site owners.
You must follow these guidelines if you do business with European Union citizens. Many WordPress WooCommerce site owners wonder how to ensure GDPR compliance on their sites. We’ll review a few tactics in this article to help you make sure your WordPress WooCommerce website complies with GDPR. Ensure that you request the WooCommerce development services provider to comply with features and policies when developing the website and integrating features.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is applicable to all organizations included and excluded in the EU. The main objectives of GDPR are to protect users’ personal information and stop businesses from misusing it. It mandates that companies should get permission from customers before collecting personal data. As a result, if you sell goods to EU customers through your WooCommerce store, you must comply with GDPR.
Why is GDPR Necessary for WooCommerce Sites?
As the owner of a WooCommerce website, collecting customer data is a crucial part of your operation. Learning more about (and retaining information about) your visitors has many advantages. As an example:
When customers buy from your store, you save information about them, such as their name, email address, and street address. Most likely, you already keep track of your visitors’ access methods and subsequent actions on your website. A tracking pixel is a common practice to connect your website to Google Analytics and any similar services you use. The information from cookies can also help you learn more about your customers. So when you collect data from customers, there are more chances for misuse and are prone to cyberattacks. Here the solution is GDPR compliance. It ensures the data the customer provides is safe and secured.
How to Make WooCommerce Store GDPR Compliant?
Set Up a Consent Management Platform on Your Site
Use a Consent Management Platform (or CMP) to ensure you follow GDPR law when managing your cookies. Ask your users for permission to track their behavior by displaying a cookie banner that contains all the necessary details about the essential and optional cookies you use.
After providing consent, certain cookies are monitored, and if approval is disabled, cookies are denied.
Please keep track of your users’ consent information, which will tell you how many of them agreed to have their behavior recorded. There are numerous excellent CMP plugins available to ensure that your WooCommerce follows GDPR compliance.
GDPR-compliant Pixel Tracker
A pixel tracker connects your WooCommerce store to any analytics or advertising platforms you might use, like Google Analytics or Google Ads, by being added to your website. The pixel keeps track of every browser event, giving you more information about where your users are coming from and what they do when they land on your website. You can only track events for willing visitors (clients who permit you to track cookies that aren’t strictly necessary) to comply with GDPR. GDPR technically prohibits using these plugins due to some pixel-tracking solutions’ disregard for cookie consent. An application for tracking pixels that complies with this regulation is called Pixel Manager for WooCommerce.
This is significant because, regardless of the platform, you will remain GDPR-compliant. Several consent management features are also included in the plugin.
Cookies are not Stored if Visitors Refuse Consent
You can communicate your users’ cookie or app identifier consent status in Google Consent Mode. It modifies the behavior of tags to respect user preferences. This is achieved by integrating with your Consent Management Platform (CMP) or a custom implementation you might have created to obtain visitors’ consent for setting cookies. Instead of storing cookies when visitors decline, tags send pings to Google. This approach is GDPR-compliant as it enables tracking without cookies, but the data might need to be more accurate than traditional tracking methods.
However, it’s essential to note that the data’s precision may be lower than with traditional cookie-based tracking. Each store owner must decide which tracking method to use, considering the specific regulations in their country. Despite not having a cookie banner, the Pixel Manager for WooCommerce plugin integrates with major Cookie Management Platforms.
Making a Privacy Policy Page
To comply with GDPR legislation, add a Privacy Policy page to your WooCommerce store. This page should include the following information: why you collect information, the details of the information, and how you will use the same.
Since the 4.9.6 update, you can make any page on your site your Privacy Policy page or create an entirely new page. Right of Access requests are one of the GDPR requirements, and a simple way to enable this is to include a contact form on your website. Ensure that the plugins and systems you employ to collect the data are compatible with this tool. If you can export data from the plugin when necessary, using plugins that store data elsewhere is acceptable.
Inform Customers About Any Security Breaches
The GDPR’s Security Breaches clause is the final important consideration for GDPR compliance. Therefore, a security plugin like Jetpack should be permanently installed on your WordPress website for your WooCommerce store to be fully compliant. According to the law, a breach must be reported to all customers whose data you store within 72 hours.
Set Up Your GDPR-compliant Woocommerce Store
Even though dealing with these regulations can initially be intimidating, a GDPR-compliant WooCommerce site can be created by following a few simple steps. WordPress’s default settings make this more accessible, and numerous plugins are available to assist. As a WooCommerce store owner, you should remain interested in your customers’ behavior to learn what they buy and why and predict what to offer them next. Fortunately, conversion tracking is still legal.
If you want accurate and GDPR-compliant conversion tracking, Pixel Manager for WooCommerce is the best solution. The plugin integrates with central analytics and ad platforms, allowing you to track conversions legally regardless of where your customers come from. Pixel Manager for WooCommerce also has consent management features and integrates with significant CMPs.
Conclusion
The GDPR-adopting businesses, agencies, and WordPress developers now project a genuine expert image and increased credibility. You build a natural rapport of trust with your users by establishing clear Terms of Use and demonstrating your efforts on your website. The GDPR gives you a chance to look into the user experience you offer on your website, in addition to the safety of the website and the data it collects. So make sure that your WooCommerce store complies with GDPR.