Four facts that belong beside the button

The four facts

How much. How often. When the next charge lands. How to stop it. Those four, in plain words, where the decision is made.

Everything else about the plan can live in the terms. These four cannot, because they are what somebody would want to know before agreeing.

Fitting them beside a button is easier than it sounds. One short line usually carries all four.

They fit on one line beside the button, which removes the usual objection that there is no room for them. Nineteen dollars a month, renewing on the first, cancel any time in settings is the whole disclosure.

• How much it costs
• How often it renews
• When the next charge lands
• How to cancel, in plain words

Where the disclosure has to sit

Adjacent to the action. Not behind a link, not below the fold, not in a block of grey text under the footer.

The test is whether somebody who read only the words around the button would understand what they were agreeing to.

A confirmation email afterwards is good practice and does not replace the disclosure before purchase.

The test a regulator applies is close to the test a customer applies: would somebody reading only the words around the button have understood what they were agreeing to.

Free trials that become charges

A trial that converts to a paid plan is the single most complained about pattern in subscriptions, and the most regulated.

Say what happens at the end of the trial, on what date, and for how much, before the trial starts. Then remind them before it converts.

A reminder a few days ahead costs almost nothing and removes most of the disputes and most of the chargebacks.

A reminder a few days before the conversion costs nothing and removes most disputes and most chargebacks. It also produces a customer who chose to stay.

Cancelling should be easy

If somebody signed up in two clicks on a website, they should be able to stop in a comparable way. Requiring a phone call to leave is the pattern under most scrutiny.

Retention offers are fine when they are one screen a customer can skip. Mazes are not.

A person who leaves cleanly often returns. A person who had to fight tells other people about it.

Requiring a phone call to leave something bought in two clicks is the pattern attracting the most attention, and it is covered from the design side in deceptive design patterns.

What happens to their things

Say what becomes of a customer's data, site or account when they stop. How long is it kept. Can they get it back. When is it deleted.

Vagueness here is what makes cancellation feel risky, which keeps people subscribed and resentful.

Our own position is stated plainly rather than buried: after the first payment, published sites stay live for 30 days after you cancel.

Say it before they buy, not in the cancellation flow. A customer who learns at the end that their data goes immediately is a customer who tells other people about it.

Price rises on renewal

If the renewal price differs from the introductory price, that is part of the four facts, not a detail for later.

Where a price changes during a subscription, tell customers before it takes effect and give them a genuine chance to leave first.

Several states now require advance notice for changes of this kind. The courtesy version and the compliant version look much the same.

Why this is a website question

The disclosure lives on the page, beside the button, in words somebody wrote. That is a website decision even when billing happens elsewhere.

Every page written by Website Builder Studio passes a check that runs before anything publishes, validated against Google Search Essentials and modern web standards.

Nothing here is legal advice, and the rules vary by state. Stating the four facts plainly satisfies the spirit of all of them.

The disclosure is words on a page beside a button, written by somebody. That makes it a website decision even when the billing happens in another system entirely.

It is also the cheapest thing on this page to fix. One line of text beside a button removes most of the disputes that otherwise arrive as chargebacks.