No other industry is undergoing as much change as e-commerce. Again and again, this also brings changes to the legal regulations. In order not to be asked to pay as a store operator, a multitude of laws and regulations must be complied with. With this year's revision of the Omnibus Directive, merchants again have a variety of extremely important aspects to consider.
The most important changes at a glance
With this legislation, it is not the namesake motor vehicles that are affected, but European companies with their own online store . What you need to consider for your business, you will learn in the following points summarized compactly.
Transparency:
Companies are now required to disclose information about criteria for ranking SEO criteria to disclose . Consumers should thus get a clearer picture of the strategy of the respective retailer.
An example can be a presentation of the weighting of parameters important for this purpose:
Match of keywords with product (20%), Number of purchases/positive reviews of products (20%), Special payments
for
higher ranking (60%)
Accordingly, as a consequence of the Omnibus Policy, companies must also disclose their keyword advertising.
Discount promotions:
In future, customers are to be protected from misleading advertising and sales offers. To this end, retailers must indicate the lowest
total price of a product within the last 30 days.
Advertising must also be clearly marked. A special
Attention is paid to a company's collaboration with influencers.
In this area, although there have been more frequent lawsuits against the famous personalities themselves in the past.
Now,
however,
manufacturers and retailers are also being held jointly responsible
Customer reviews:
Companies must take appropriate measures to verify the authenticity of reviews. In addition, it must be apparent to customers how the online store checks and ensures the authenticity of reviews.
The goal is for consumers to have the most "genuine" shopping experience possible!
One possibility for store operators would be to add a corresponding passage in the terms and conditions.
This
explains the authenticity and authenticity check of ratings and their constant control by moderators, etc. A similar
example is the privacy notice, which shows how personal data is used.
In addition, companies must indicate whether product tests, sweepstakes or similar have created incentives for the submission of reviews.
Penalties:
In the event of misleading discount promotions, compensation payments will be incurred. In the event of violations of the directive and
unlawful GTCs
, retailers must expect warnings, fines. The extent of the penalty payments is similar to that for violations of the GDPR.
This
usually amounts
to at least 4% of the annual turnover. EU member states are entitled to adjust the amount above this minimum
in this case.
If the calculation is not possible, the penalty is set at two million euros!
Background of the Directive
In early 2022, the U.S. Trade Commission fined the Fashion Nova company US$4.2 million.
The reason: Only the best and most appealing reviews of each product were selected and displayed to store visitors.
For this, the company deliberately suppressed negative reviews.
This incident woke up the industry and made both many
Companies in e-commerce as well as consumers unsettled.