It’s the most wonderful timeeeeee of the year! 🎶🎄🎅🏼
It’s true! November and December really are wonderful, but that holly jolly tune can turn into “it’s the most STRESSFUL time of year” as a business owner if you aren’t careful.
For many business owners, the holiday season is the time of year where they experience their highest sales volume and while that can be super exciting, it can also be extremely overwhelming.
Beyond the basic planning of offers, promotions, and discounts, you also have to consider how to keep your business legally protected during this season.
To make things easy for you, I’ve compiled your ultimate BFCM (Black Friday/Cyber Monday) legal checklist so that your business is fully protected from the very beginning.
And even if you aren't participating in BFCM this year, this list can apply to your business all year round!
The Ultimate Legal Checklist To Protect Your Business This Holiday Season
✔️ Website Privacy Policy
What It Is: A privacy policy is simply a detailed notice that is published on a website, typically found in the footer, that outlines how that specific website collects, uses and manages a user’s personal information.
Most privacy policies are fairly similar and include information such as:
- A detailed list of what personal information is collected, including name, email address, phone number, etc.
- How that information is collected, such as opt-in forms (including email sign up forms), product or service checkout pages, cookies for marketing or affiliate purposes, etc.
- How that information is used, such as processing orders, providing customer service, sending emails, targeting ads, etc.
- How that information is protected
- What rights the user has to the information they share, including how they can access, update or delete the information given
Why It Matters: When you are handling personal information, privacy concerns are HUGE.
When users are visiting a website, they typically understand that their information is being tracked, since this is a common scenario in the online world, but they ultimately want to know HOW it’s being used.
A privacy policy is the thing that assures users that you are not improperly using their information and that you are being up front and honest about how it’s being used.
Additionally, having a privacy policy builds trust with your website users and limits your liability by showing that you’ve taken reasonable steps to protect your audience’s data and can often be the thing that saves you from a massive lawsuit.
✔️ Website Terms of Use
What It Is: Your Website Terms of Use is a legal agreement between you, the website owner, and its users (your audience or anyone that finds you on the internet!) that outlines the rules and guidelines for using the site.
Why It Matters: This agreement sets the stage for what visitors of your website are and aren’t allowed to do with your content. This covers topics like whether your customers can use any of the images on your site, including your logo when referencing your content, how they may backlink to your website and quote your blogs, how old they have to be to access your site, and more.
✔️ Terms of Purchase For Products + Services
Whether you’re selling digital products or physical products this holiday season, having crystal clear terms and conditions that governs every transaction is a MUST!
What It Is: This legal agreement is THE one that sets the ground rules and expectations for how your customers can use your products while simultaneously providing a safety net for you as the business owner.
Why It Matters: Just like in a football game, when there’s a dispute of any kind, the referees refer to the rulebook for their final call. The same goes for your business – if or when you run into a problem of any kind, you can turn to your business owner “rulebook” to determine your plan of action for resolution.
Essentially, a Terms of Purchase Agreement outlines the specific terms of a transaction for either physical or digital products and covers policies that are a part of the purchase process, such as refunds, chargebacks or cancellations.
✔️ Clear Refund Policy
Speaking of refunds, it’s EXTRA important to make sure that your refund policy is crystal clear during the holiday season when buying is typically at its peak for consumers.
What It Is: A refund policy is exactly what it sounds like – the rules for refunds for your products or services. Do you offer them at all? Is there a no refund policy? Whatever it is, it needs to be abundantly clear so there’s no confusion or misunderstandings with your customers!
Why It Matters: During the holiday season, people become “add to cart” happy with all of the sales and discounts and once things settle down, they may start to experience buyers remorse.
It’s your job as a business owner to get in front of this and make sure your policy on refunds is clear so that when or if the question is asked, you can respond with confidence and have something in writing to back you up!
Your refund policy is typically included in your Terms of Purchase, but it can also be wise to reiterate this policy directly on the checkout page before someone purchases so that they can’t claim they didn’t see it!
P.S. If you have a “no refund” policy, here are 5 key elements to include to make it effective!
✔️ Disclaimers
What It Is: There are a few different types of disclaimers and depending on your business type or the type of offers you're selling this Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or holiday season, you may need to use one or all of them to make sure your business stays protected.
- General Disclaimer – when creating content, such as a course, program, or membership, around legal, finance, or medical topics, it’s important to proactively protect yourself from disgruntled consumers who may use your information incorrectly or end up harming themselves in the process. This simple disclaimer should be displayed along with your marketing materials.
- Earnings Disclaimer – income claims are not something to toss around lightly because they open you up to a ton of liability (AKA, they’re an easy way to get sued). This disclaimer protects you and your assets should anyone take your claims too literally, not see the results they expected, and decide to sue.
- Health and Wellness Disclaimer – made specifically for health coaches, nutritionists, personal trainers, and any other fitness professional with a website, to inform your visitors that you’re not a doctor, and any information you share (or services you provide) is not medical advice.
- Affiliate Disclaimer – if you’re an affiliate that’s promoting products or services for another company, you are legally required to disclose that information to your audience. As a business owner, you could potentially get sued under the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for failing to disclose gifted, paid or sponsored collaborations with brands or influencers.
This is probably one of the ONLY times I would tell you to copy and paste something… but that’s because I’m giving you written permission to do so!
To avoid potential fines on your passive income, make sure you include language like this the next time you’re promoting a product or service as an affiliate:
“Affiliate disclaimer: Some of the links in this [post/page] are affiliate links, which means that if you click on a link and make a purchase, I may receive a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you and helps to support my business. Please note that I only recommend products and services that I personally use and trust. I will always disclose when a link is an affiliate link, and I never recommend a product or service solely for the purpose of earning a commission.”
Why It Matters: Overall, implementing the correct disclaimers in your business protects you by clearly outlining limitations of responsibility, setting boundaries for liability, and managing user expectations. They are a crucial legal safeguard that helps prevent misunderstandings or lawsuits!
✔️ FTC Compliant Sales Copy
What It Is: FTC-compliant sales copy refers to marketing and promotional content that adheres to the guidelines set by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to prevent deceptive or unfair business practices. These rules are designed to protect consumers by ensuring that advertising is truthful, substantiated, and transparent.
Why It Matters: By choosing to ignore the FTC and write sales copy that’s catchy, persuasive, and appealing to your audience could land you in some SERIOUS trouble down the road that’s time consuming and costly!
CLICK HERE to learn the most common FTC Compliant mistakes in marketing so you can avoid them in your sales copy this holiday season (and beyond!).
✔️ Shipping and Fulfillment Policies
What It Is: Similar to the refund policy mentioned above, your shipping and fulfillment policy is exactly what it sounds like – the details about what a customer can expect for their product fulfillment and shipping timeline.
Why It Matters: During a season of high sales volume, it’s important that you’re upfront and clear about the expected timeline for your customers to receive their items if you're selling physical products.
By being realistic and clear, you can avoid customer confusion, dissatisfaction, and disputes.
In addition to including this information in your Terms of Purchase agreement, it’s also wise to include this information all across your website, especially the checkout page so that your customers are made well aware and know exactly what to expect before they buy.
✔️ Chargeback Protection Plan
What It Is: A strategy designed to help businesses mitigate the risk and financial loss associated with chargebacks. A chargeback occurs when a customer disputes a transaction with their credit card company, often leading to a refund to the customer and potential financial or reputational damage to the business.
Why It Matters: Without the right chargeback policies in place and used correctly in your business, someone can buy your offer (whether it’s a product or service), use it, benefit from it and THEN ask their bank to take their money back and return it to their account.
Yes, it sounds absurd, but as your legal bestie I’m here to say that this scenario is way more common than you may think and it actually costs businesses $150 BILLION per year. 🤯
This whole concept is called a chargeback and it applies to BOTH digital product based businesses and service providers.
If you sell digital products, CLICK HERE for all the details for protecting your business against chargebacks and if you sell services, CLICK HERE!
Protect Your Business This Black Friday, Cyber Monday, & Every Day In Between
Overall, the holiday season is typically an exciting time of year for business owners as it usually draws in more customers through sales, discounts, and promotions.
But without the correct legal backing in place, you could actually find yourself in a wholeeeee lot of trouble, which is ultimately what I want to help you avoid.
Even if you aren’t planning your BFCM offers, this list can protect your business as a whole any day of the week!
So, go through the checklist and make sure you have everything taken care of – it’ll save you a lot of time, money, and headaches in the future, promise!
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