A Policy is essentially a legal document provided by a business to its customers. When this policy is hosted in your website as a webpage it becomes more than just a document. In this article, we will go through the key requirements for converting your policy document into a policy webpage for Terms Of Service, Privacy Policy or any other policy.
Structure page like a document
Users expect a policy page to be structured like a regular document as though it was printed on paper. This will establish confidence to the user that they are reading a legal document and not another page in your website.
Here are some important tips to consider when writing your policy page to look like a document:
✅ Use H2 or H3 tags for topics inside the page
✅ Use emphasis in certain words to grab attention to detail
✅ Break it down to multiple paragraphs for easy consumption
✅ A Table of contents is necessary for easy navigation
✅ Have bullet points or numbering instead of long paras
✅ Open any links to external tab
🙅 Avoid using fancy animations or scroll effects
🙅 Images are not expected in a legal doc
🙅 Do not use iframe embeds like videos
🙅 If you are handcoding the page, avoid using bleeding edge css styles or HTML tags
Overall the structure in your webpage should represent the policy in document style.
Key elements in any Policy content
For writing any policy webpage, certain key pieces are required and is expected by the end-users. Just like how any webpage has a header, footer, hero section, a policy webpage too can have certain must-have blocks.
👉️ Policy Title - Based on the type of policy. Example: Refund Policy
👉️ A Preface - a brief intro on what this policy document talks about
👉️ Last revised date - When changes were made to this policy
👉️ Business info - Name of business along with their main office address with postal code
👉️ Legal contact - Name of contact, email and phone number
The above blocks are essential to make your policy webpage look professional and useful.
Make it multi-lingual
If you have a web presence, then your website will be accessed globally. Unlike other pages in your website, a policy page should be understood by your end-users to the fineprint. Mis-understanding will result in customer loss, legal implications and brand damage.
Although english is a global language, it is important to translate and convey your policies in the most popular languages used by your customers. To identify the top languages, track users by their country or browser locale, This will give an idea on what languages your policies should be available. This can be done achieved easily using any analytics software like Google Analytics.
And last of all, do not send them to a Google Translate link of your policy page, this can only create more issues than solving user needs. Instead involve a language expert for translating your policies and provide an easy way for the user to view the policy in their preferred locale.
Give downloadable copy of your Policy
It is recommended to always provide a link to a downloadable copy of your policies preferably in an uneditable and printer friendly format like PDF. Most enterprise customers prefer to download, print and share offline copies of your policies with their organizations' legal team for review and storage.
Providing a downloadable PDF copy in your website, will enhance your business brand as an enterprise friendly partner.
List Policy versions
If you notice, in important policies of all websites, there is a field called "Date of last revision". A policy will have a legal value only if it is known when it was last edited and what changes were made. Policy versioning will help you solve disputes in the beginning stage itself.
An action committed by an end-user at a certain date holds value not just to the policy but to the policy available at that date. Retrospective legal review is only possible if versioning of policies is maintained.
Win customer confidence by providing access to revisions of your policies. This will establish trust among customers that your policies are not name-sake but it is actually modified, versioned and tracked as your service or product evolves.
Keep it simple, fresh and accessible
When writing a policy, it is important to involve an expert in that field and should be peer reviewed by a legal team. Overall it is important to keep your policy page simple to read and understand by avoiding typos, superlatives and complex terminology. Make policy page accessible to screen readers and other text-to-speech software. Make it easy to navigate by use of table of contents or sidebar. Above all, make sure your policy page is not outdated on relative to your service, update the policy page to keep it fresh.
Hope the above items, will help shape your policy page aligned with your business.
