Launching a Product: What did I Forget?
It never fails. You’ve spent hundreds of hours making this product amazing. It’s been a roller-coaster ride of changes and re-factoring. You’ve designed your heart out and you finally have the product you’ve dreamed about. And your customers agree! This really works.
Then you start getting questions. What is your privacy policy? Crap. How do I get my money back? Crap. What do I do if something doesn’t work? Crap. Crap. Crap.
Having all the content in place can be the missing ingredient that will make your product shine or leave customers feeling like you don’t care. This is an overview of the bare minimum of what you need.
Clearly, I am not a lawyer. So, take this advice ALL with a grain of salt.
Shopify has some really great tools for generating these bits of content. It’s boilerplate yes, but you will save yourself HOURS of time and will avoid the embarrassing experience of having plagiarized someone else’s material.
Privacy Policy
A privacy policy tells your users what you will or won’t do with their data. The decisions you make in thinking about this policy will affect what your customers decide to do. If you consider what has happened in the press over the last few years, you will be aware that a policy that doesn’t support and protect your customers will have a dramatic effect on your customers.
Shopify Free privacy policy generator
Terms and Conditions
Terms and Conditions are your CYA for the product. It outlines what is acceptable behavior and how things will are addressed if something goes sideways. Without terms and conditions, your product can be used for anything. Even if it’s a pretty unicorn journal for discussing cute unicorns, someone can use it for storing the state secrets of a third world county, and you will be hard-pressed to argue why that user can’t. That’s a silly example, but you get the point. If you don’t say what the terms and conditions are, you are open to anything.
Shopify Terms and conditions generator
About You
Customers want to know who you are. Why did you build this product? What did you learn in the process? You’re a human right? So be human and tell your story. The story can be a competitive advantage and a great marketing tool. Just remember, be human. And be humble.
Support
Of all the content suggestions, this is the vaguest. At the VERY LEAST you need an email that they can email with some messaging about how long it will take you to get back to them. At the most, this can be a knowledge base with hundreds of articles about how this product works and how users can do things. Do not launch without some way of making clear how your customer will be supported. It’s like a warm, cozy blanket on a winter’s night. Your customers may never need it, but it’s so nice to have.
Pricing
This should be obvious. How much does this product cost? Do you offer discounts? Do you have special pricing? Special services? You should clearly outline what the service is and how much it will cost.
Returns and Refunds
I have returned to products I didn’t like because of the return policy. Audible.com for instance. In all honesty, knowing that there is a clear refund policy means that I am reducing the risk of my investment and I know that there is a way out. You might include what happens to your customer’s data as well.
Shopify Free return policy generator
Contact
How do people contact you? Talking to a human, even via email, can be a fantastic sales and customer retention tool. Sometimes things don’t make sense and being able to talk it through quickly is all that’s needed.
One note, with all of this contact information out there, how do you have a life? Aren’t you going to have constant emails and phone calls?
If you publish regular office hours, that can help a ton. Most people are accommodating about office hours under an obscure amount of money. Roughly, over $100 a month in subscriptions and I notice that customers don’t want to hear about office hours. You might keep that in mind.
This is is just the minimum set of content you should have for launch. You might check out what your competition is doing as well to see if you are missing anything.
Join the Conversation
This is the from the archive of an ongoing series called Making Things That Matter. Each week I will send you an email with another step in the process of building products and launching ideas. Signup here to join the conversation.
