Ensuring you’re complying with the law while protecting your payments and your content!
A lot of business owners are scrambling to get Black Friday offers up, but are missing the most important part of the whole process…the legal documents that actually secure the payments for the offers and protect their content. You also have legal requirements when you’re collecting personal information (e.g. someone’s name, email, and credit card info), posting affiliate links, using testimonials and more:
1. Website Policies Every Online Business Needs
I’m like a broken record with these, but that’s because they’re a legal requirement for online businesses, and critical to protecting not just all of your original content on your webpages and sales pages, but also, protecting you from someone coming to your website, misusing your info, and trying to hold you legally responsible.
These policies go in the footer of where you’re selling whether that’s your webpage or your sales page. A Privacy Policy is a legal requirement and you can be fined without one. Recently, I’ve audited several business owners have taken from free (and even paid!) services and they weren’t compliant. Remember, your website or sales page is accessible globally, people can purchase from different countries; your Privacy Policy needs to be compliant with global data privacy laws.
***Even a pop up Black Friday offer should have a Privacy Policy linked in the footer! Regardless of whether you are selling from a webpage, a sales page, or a landing page, you need a compliant Privacy Policy in the footer.
The other two policies you need are Terms & Conditions to protect your intellectual property, guide behavior on your website, outline your refund policy and more. A Disclaimer Policy protects you from people misusing your info on your page, and is a legal requirement if you have affiliate links, post testimonials, etc. I’ve seen many business owners include new affiliate links for other businesses’ Black Friday sales. Make sure you disclose those links in your Disclaimer Policy (In the U.S., not disclosing this is an FTC violation…)
2. Use Contracts for Every Offer – Big or Small
Offers sold from your website or sales page need contract terms specific to each offer. This includes not just your higher ticket offers like coaching, but also, paid intensives, VIP days, paid webinars, courses, etc. Just because something costs less doesn’t mean you want to give it away for free, have someone steal it and resell it, or have someone repeatedly violating your boundaries by paying for a low touch offer and expecting high touch! We have templates for pretty much everything you’ll need; respond back if you need clarity or direction.
3. Legal Compliance at Checkout: Contract Workflows
This is going to vary depending on your business and your offers, but for offers where someone is checking out completely via your website, e.g. you’re not sending them a contract to sign:
Embed the contract terms for that offer in your checkout. Have an affirmative click to agree where users have to click to agree to your terms before completing their checkout. Have the terms hyperlinked to the bottom of your webpage or sales page. So, you’d have your website policies, and then you’d have your Terms of Use for your specific program.
If they’re going to e-sign your contract vs. agreeing to your terms on your page (recommend, esp. for higher ticket), you can still automate the workflow (see my Trademarks page for how I did it).
4. Example: How to Link Contracts on Your Sales Page
Here’s an example of a workshop I planned to launch but didn’t have a chance yet (relatable?)
You’ll see at the bottom the Workshop Terms of Use specific to the workshop and my Privacy Policy. This was going to be attached to my website that has my Disclaimer Policy and Terms and Conditions policies as well so that’s why they’re not linked in the sales page footer. The point I’m trying to make is that the contract for the workshop is linked at the bottom of the page as is the Privacy Policy, since I’m collecting personal information when people checkout. The contract terms are also linked to the checkout page itself. LeadPages (the software I used) doesn’t have the functionality requiring someone click to agree to the contract terms, so I added the contract again at the bottom. Programs like Kajabi allow you to do both. If any of this is unclear, please respond back and I’ll clarify!
5. Automate E-signing for High Ticket Offers
For higher ticket offers like 1:1 coaching or 1:1 services, clients should be e-signing contracts. It’s still possible to automate this process. You can see how I automated contract signing into my workflow here: https://solivagantlegal.com/trademarks/ where business owners can view my info and process, sign my contract, pay their invoice, and book their call all via the automated workflow.
6. Stay FTC Compliant with Affiliate Disclosures
Are you posting affiliate links for other businesses’ products or services? You have to disclose that you’re an affiliate in a Disclaimer Policy in your footer.
Running your own Affiliate Program? You need Affiliate Terms and Conditions to outline your commission structure, provide details on sign-up and acceptable use of your affiliate link, etc.
Questions on any of the above? Contact me via the Contact Us form at the bottom of this page or send me a DM on Instagram!
Have a happy Thanksgiving if you celebrate!