But if you are tackling your launch on your own, I want to make sure you add these 3 pages to your master list + take care of them when you have time to. not minutes before your cart opens + you are feeling more frazzled than you have in your whole life.
Privacy policy
This overlooked page isn’t just for your next product launch, it’s for any website you have under your business.
If your product has its own URL with a separate install of WordPress, you want to get a privacy policy link on it as soon as you start collecting information — whether that’s email addresses or payment details.
Now, I’m not a lawyer, so I cannot speak to the exact legal issues here. But I can tell you that having a privacy policy is a great idea for businesses that want to avoid crappy circumstances.
Not ready to invest in a lawyer drafting a privacy policy just for you? The next best option is to snag a copy of the one provided in small business bodyguard.
While you’re at it, make sure your main site has one too. So your ass is covered.
Opt-in thank you page
Most of the time you’ll set up a landing page or a pre-sales page with information about your product + a spot where interested folks can register — smart business idea! I set up forms like this a handful of times a week, and yet maybe 10% of the time do I get instructions for the form success steps once a user adds their info.
There are usually two options, depending on the form solution you are using. The fastest is to use a form success message — a simple “thanks for giving me your email address” sentence replaces the form on the page so that your site user knows their email was entered in correctly.
The next option, and the one I recommend, is to redirect them to a thank you page. The reason I do this is that it makes it crystal clear to your user that the form actually did something. But it also gives you a chance to give them another CTA — call to action.
If you set up a pre-sales landing page for the purpose of gathering emails, once they enter their email, you no longer need them to view your pre-sales page. But wouldn’t it be nice if they shared the page with their social networks? Creating a thank you page with sharing instructions is an easy way to get them to do just that.
Some email marketing systems have their own version of a thank you page + that’s fine to use if you’d like. I prefer keeping them on my site where I have full control over the page design + content. But if it’s easier for you to add sharing instructions to the MailChimp thank you page, do it up! But no matter which route you go, make sure your users know their email entry went through. It’s great user experience + keeps confusion at bay.
Payment thank you page
No, I’m not repeating myself. This is a completely different thank you page. This overlooked launch page is what users see once they pay + can vary dramatically based on what you are selling.
If you are creating a digital product for download, the thank you page after payment clears might have their download link or instructions for getting the product in their hands.
If you are creating a course, the payment thank you page may have registration instructions for your membership site or a bulleted list telling them what to expect + when/how they will receive their login details.
The settings for your payment thank you page can usually be found in your payment processor system. Paypal buttons give you the option to set a URL to route to after payment. WooCommerce + iThemes exchange have similar settings per product. Simply set up your thank you page + paste the URL into the appropriate setting + you’re done.
Branding, branding, branding
Not only are these pages important for your overall user experience, they are all opportunities to keep your branding consistent.
And that doesn’t just mean look + feel (like colors, fonts, etc), it also means language/voice, layout + process or flow.
Is the language on your sales page super fun + quirky? Why not add some of that sass to your thank you page? It may be harder to add quirk to your legal copy, but it’s not impossible either. Adding a heading about your love/hate relationship with spam lets the user know you have a thing for meat in a can but not junk emails + the sale of user information.
Setting a great user experience for your pre-sales page gives your site users a case of the warm fuzzies knowing that the product purchase system will likely be the same — easy peasy + tech-trouble free!