Notifying users of unclear subscription pages

Thursday, November 08, 2018

Every month, millions of Chrome users encounter pages with insufficient mobile subscription
information. Surprising charges that come from unclear communication are a poor user experience.
That’s why starting from Chrome 71 (December 2018), Chrome will show a warning before these pages,
so that users can make informed decisions when signing up to mobile based subscription services.
Users will be offered the choice to proceed to the page or go back if they were unaware that they
were entering a billing page.

Unclear mobile subscriptions

Picture this: Andrea is browsing the web on a mobile connection to access a gaming page and
they’re presented with a page that asks them for their mobile phone details.

They fill in the blanks with their mobile number and press Continue, and get access to the
content.

The next month, the phone bill arrives and they see a charge they were not expecting. Was the
subscription to the online gaming service really that expensive? Did they really agree to pay that
specific price for the service? How much did they agree to be charged to access the content?

Clearer billing information for Chrome users

We want to make sure Chrome users understand when they are going through a billing flow and trust
that they’ll be able to make informed decisions while browsing the web.

To adequately inform users, it’s important to provide a sufficient level of details within the
billing page as outlined by our new
mobile billing charges best practices.
Pages that answer positively to the following questions generally provide sufficient information
for users:

• Is the billing information visible and obvious to users? For example, adding no
  subscription information on the subscription page or hiding the information is a bad start
  because users should have access to the information when agreeing to subscribe.
• Can customers easily see the costs they’re going to incur before accepting the terms?
  For example, displaying the billing information in grey characters over a grey background,
  therefore making it less readable, is not considered a good user practice.
• Is the fee structure easily understandable? For example, the formula presented to explain
  how the cost of the service will be determined should be as simple and straightforward as
  possible.

If Chrome detects pages that don’t provide sufficient billing information to users, the following
warning will be displayed to the user on Chrome mobile, Chrome desktop and Android’s WebView:

When we identify such pages, we will notify the webmaster through
Search Console where
there will be an option to let us know about the changes they’ve made to clarify the billing
process. For websites that aren’t verified on Search Console, we will do our best to get in touch
with the webmasters affected and will be available to answer questions in our
public support forum available in
15 languages. Once an appeal has been sent via Search Console, we will review the changes and
remove the warning accordingly.

If your billing service takes users through a clearly visible and understandable billing process
as described
in our best practices, you don’t
need to make any changes. Also, the new warning in Chrome doesn’t impact your website’s ranking in
Google Search.

If you have any questions, please come and have a chat with us in the
Webmaster Help Forum.

Posted by Emily Schechter, Chrome Security, Giacomo Gnecchi Ruscone and
Badr Salmi El Idrissi, Trust and Safety