Is Your Money-Back Guarantee Driving Customers … Away?

Your product or service could be compelling, your price amazing, and your sales letter "hypnotic" … but if your satisfaction guarantee looks shady, your would-be clients are out the door.

The wording, the structure, and the terms of your guarantee are a direct reflection on you and your company. What’s your money back guarantee saying about YOU?

No-No #1: Putting important clauses in parentheses, or burying them in the copy.

Even innocent clauses put in parentheses can give customers a queasy feeling. For instance:

"If you’re not overjoyed with NoNapps Hair Creem, simply return it within 90 days (with all of the stay fresh seals in tact, all jars unopened, with original packaging, and in resalable condition), and we’ll refund 100% of your money … with no hassle!"

No hassle, eh?

Right.

An extreme example, yes. But the point is just how easy it is to give your product the "Oh-yeah-by-the-way-this-isn’t-really-that-important-but-maybe-I-should-mention-it-I-hope-you-don’t-mind…!!!" vibe that puts potential clients on alert.

No-No #2: Offering an industry minimum guarantee.

30 days is the "standard minimum" guarantee term we typically see for most products online … though I’ve had the misfortune to see someone offering a "5-day guarantee". I mean, really … what is the point? Offering a super-short guarantee term can be worse than not offering one at all, and can make prospects feel that you’re afraid they’ll realize your product is worthless, if given sufficient time to try it out.

Particularly with information products, your customers may buy immediately, but not USE (read) the product until after the guarantee period. Not intentionally, but just because their lives are as busy as people’s are nowadays, and they may’ve even bought the product when they did to guard against a possible price increase. I’ve put off purchasing infoproducts with 30-day guarantees quite a few times, as I wouldn’t have been able to get to them that first month. But I forgot to later go back and order the darn things — or decided I didn’t need them after all — and the merchant LOST THAT SALE.

And it was solely because of the length of the guarantee.

The moral?

If you’re confident in your product, REWARD impulse shoppers! Don’t have your guarantee, of all things, give people a reason not to buy your product right away.

No-No #3: Putting ambiguous clauses in your guarantee.

I ran across a website that assured me — with great emphasis — that my success was "almost guaranteed!"

:-|

… ?

Business owners can get so caught up in trying to protect our own interests, that we often forget to step back and LOOK at what we’re saying; and determine whether it will actually help or hurt our cause. So focus on what you can guarantee, not what you’re unsure whether or not you should guarantee, and toss all iffy, credibility-killing clauses out the window.

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That’s enough for now, as the next part is rather long … and important enough to warrant its own post:

No-No #4: Breaking the LAW!

In the next article , we’ll talk about the FTC’s standards and regulations for offering product guarantees.

Until then…

 Respected Business & Marketing author H.T. Major has nearly a decade of collective experience fine-tuning the art of creating effective, efficient business websites that SELL, and boosting the conversion of existing sites. Now she offers supremely affordable website, photo, & business design services that are not only about creating "pretty pictures", but about creating RESULTS: visit ChumpChangeWebDesign.com.