Regulated purchases need agreements: terms, privacy, cookies, distance sales, pre-contract information, refunds. Most apps hide them behind a link nobody clicks, and then discover in a dispute that a consent nobody read is hard to rely on. We tried to make the documents part of the product without making sign-up feel like a contract signing. This post is about what we did, why plain language was the point, and what is still on the list.
The constraint
Yeşilçam Studios sells pricing">tokens and subscriptions to consumers, including in Türkiye, where distance selling of digital content has specific rules. Tokens are credited to the wallet the moment you pay and a subscription starts immediately, so the usual fourteen-day right of withdrawal does not apply, but only if you were told before paying and expressly approved. That means a visible sentence on the payment step, a checkbox, and a record of the tick. Without the record, the exception does not hold. The legal minimum, in other words, already requires a good consent screen; we only had to design one.
What we did
- Documents live in one system with versions; the app always shows the published one and records which version you accepted. Published versions are never edited; a material change becomes a new version and asks for acceptance again.
- Sign-up asks for one checkbox naming the Terms and the Privacy Policy; both open inside the form, not in a new tab, so you never lose a half-typed registration.
- Purchase asks for one checkbox naming the three sales documents (Preliminary Information Form, Distance Sales Agreement, Cancellation and Refund Policy), with the sentence that matters: tokens are delivered instantly, so there is no withdrawal, and here is what is refundable anyway.
- Turkish is binding; English is provided; the other four languages see the English text with a note saying so.
- All six documents are on the website under Legal and inside the app wherever you are asked to accept one.
Why plain language
A consent nobody understands is a liability, not a protection. The refund policy says in one paragraph what happens to an unused token pack (refundable within 14 days if no token has been spent), a subscription (cancel any time, access to the end of the period, no pro-rata refund) and a failed generation (tokens return to the wallet automatically when the failure is on our side). Support answers fewer questions; users trust the checkout more; and if a dispute ever reaches an arbitration committee, the record shows a person read one clear sentence and ticked a box next to it.
Design decisions we argued about
One checkbox or three?
One per step. A checkbox per document is theatre; nobody reads three documents more carefully because there are three boxes. One box that names the documents and states the one consequence that matters is honest and enforceable.
Inline or new tab?
Inline. A new tab loses the form, and on a phone it often loses the person. The documents open inside the form and close back to it.
Where does the withdrawal sentence go?
Next to the checkbox, in the language of the page, not only inside the document. The document repeats it as a contract term; the checkbox is where the person actually sees it.
How to apply this to your own product
- Version your documents and store the version with every acceptance.
- Put the consequence that matters in one sentence next to the checkbox.
- Open documents inline; never take the person away from the form.
- State which language is binding and mark translations as translations.
- Refund more than the law requires and say so plainly; unused packs within fourteen days cost little and remove most disputes.
What we still owe
Translations of the documents themselves into German, French, Spanish and Italian, and a personal page where you can see what you accepted and when. Both are on the list. Until then, the English text with a note is what those languages see, and the binding Turkish text is always one click away.
Frequently asked
Do I have to accept again after an update? Only when a change is material. A new version is published and the app asks for acceptance again; minor wording changes do not interrupt you.
Where is my invoice? An e-Archive invoice is issued within seven days and sent to your account e-mail. Prices include VAT; TRY for the Türkiye market, USD elsewhere.
Is card data stored by Yeşilçam Studios? No. Card data goes straight to the payment provider and is never stored by us; the documents say so, and so does the checkout.