Do You Need Help Setting up Your Small Business?

One of the most important parts of starting an online store is setting up your product pages with product descriptions and product photographs. When doing so, it's important that you consider the legal implications of anything you write or any photographs you take. It may come as a surprise, but there are lots of ways your product pages can get you into trouble if you're not careful.

Thankfully, avoiding trouble with the law is easy when you take the right precautions. Here are three ways to avoid breaking the rules on your product pages.

Make Sure Your Descriptions Are Accurate

All sales, including online sales, are a form of legally binding contract. You agree to provide a buyer with the goods they want, and the buyer agrees to provide you with money.

That's why, by law, all your product descriptions have to match the reality of the corresponding products as closely as possible. If they don't, you'll be selling your customers products they didn't truly ask for, breaching the sales contract and opening yourself up to legal trouble.

When you write your product descriptions, never embellish to make your products sound better than they are, make promises you can't guarantee or omit important details. For example, imagine you are selling a used laptop with 4GB of RAM. Omitting that the product is used, lying and saying that it has 8GB RAM or saying the computer is guaranteed to break down would all be illegal, and your customer would have a right to pursue legal action against you.

Always Get a Model Release

Will you be including models in any of your product photographs? Models are often essential when snapping pics of clothing, jewellery and worn accessories. Photographs of products in use (for example, a man using the knife you're selling to cut fruit) can also help convert customers, so models are used commonly across all market sectors.

If you are using models, make sure you get all of them to sign model releases. A model release is a liability waiver signed by the model, giving you expressed permission to use the photos to market your product. If you don't get a model's permission, they could sue you further down the line for using their photos without their consent.

Never Copy Other Websites

When you have a lot of products to set up pages for, it can be tempting to copy and paste the great descriptions and photographs your competitors have already come up with. However, while this may save you money in the short-term, it could get you into huge trouble in the future.

All photos and descriptions are automatically protected by copyright law. If you steal content from other people's websites, you're stealing copyrighted materials, leaving you open to get sued if you get caught. It's far better to come up with your own descriptions or pay a professional to write them for you. Some wholesalers and manufacturers may let you use their images and text on your own website, but you should always double-check before doing so.

For more information and assistance, contact a lawyer today.