Adding Terms of Use, Privacy, Conditions of Sale statements etc is a MUST

Some might say that customers like to know who they are dealing with, but those people are full of it. Customers don't care about your return policies, what to do if they receive a broken product, or what to do if the size they ordered is wrong.

Likewise, they don't care what you are going to do with the personally identifiable information you collect. I know for a fact there are people who love SPAM mail- I got an email selling me Viagra today that told me all about it.

Never mind that providing privacy and terms of sale information is a legal requirement almost everywhere - that just goes back to your customers getting a lawyer. Everybody knows that people don't like to sue lazy, complacent companies for easy money, right?

If you are running any site, you will need to let your customers know exactly who they are dealing and under what terms you operate.

At the very least, each site needs a privacy policy (you might have read about the recent changes required by Google on all sites that have Adsense on them…) and also contact details.

Each country will also have it's own laws requiring site owners to do certain things…

Its easy to forget to add these items - you spend 3 months tweaking your sites visuals, two months adding products, and you just want to launch that puppy and let it fly. However, these are the documents that people are going to read when deciding if they want to give you their email address or their credit card number.

Statistics show that while more and more people are buying online, an increasing number of them are even more wary about privacy policies, if they can return an item, and what making a purchase consents them to.

Do your customers a favor and put these policies in place, even if it's only to cover your own butt. That way if there ever is a problem at least you have a published, established policy you can point the customer to and not come off like you are trying to pull the wool over their eyes and take advantage of them.

Most of this post is courtesy of my good friend Jason over at JC Commerce.