Terms and conditions, often abbreviated as T&Cs, are an important aspect of any website or business. They form the legal foundation that protects the interests of your website and its users. Most of us (as users) usually skimp through the terms and conditions. In spite of that, as a service provider and the owner of the website, it’s your responsibility to keep your customers informed about your terms and conditions, not just for their benefit, but for yours as well.
It is important to make sure that the terms and conditions are well laid out and structured so that your customers can read and understand them easily. It is even more important to cover all bases in order to be able to avoid potential disputes. While the effort put into it can feel Sisyphean, it is important to have well-defined terms and conditions. Here are a few things you should keep in mind when writing your website’s T&Cs.
Cover all the Aspects
While declaring the terms and conditions, it is imperative that you cover all the bases. They should be inclusive of all the aspects and nothing should be left out, no matter how trivial. The best way of knowing what to cover is to analyze why you need terms and conditions. Every website is different and although the general terms and conditions will roughly remain the same, you will have to tailor them to the unique aspects and services of your website. Using the same terms and conditions as that of another website could not only be a copyright infringement, but they would also fail to protect your, your user’s, and your website’s interests. Your terms and conditions should generally include the following aspects:
- Intellectual property rights
- Products and services offered
- Prices and payments policies
- Copyrights
- Guarantees and warranties
- Shipping and delivery policies
- Arbitration clauses
- Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notice
- Clauses regarding liability
- Privacy Statement and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for European countries
- Advertiser relationships
- Termination clause
In addition to these, you may further include other aspects relevant to your website. It is also crucial to provide a contact number or email that users can reach you on to inquire about the terms and conditions if they need to. Limiting liability is an important part. The terms and conditions should contain a clause that clears your liability regarding any errors in the content of the website.
Fair, Crisp and Clear
Your terms and conditions should not be wordy or vague. The terms and conditions are essentially a legal document that should reflect your business’s integrity. Each and every clause should be crisp and clear, not the type that could be left open to interpretation. A good way to get this right is to use a terms and conditions generator, which lets you generate the T&Cs that are tailored to your website. Being vague in a legal document reflects poorly on your website and can result in loopholes and legal complications. The structure of the document should be clear, with well-worded headings and subheadings, so that the user is able to navigate through it and understand its flow easily. You can take the liberty of using a bold font for certain points that you wish to highlight.
Your terms and conditions should also be fair to the user. Stating your terms and conditions does not mean that they are completely applicable and legally binding. Users have provisions to challenge the terms and conditions if they are unfair through laws like the Consumer Protection Act in the United States and the Consumer Rights Act in the United Kingdom.
Convenient Location
Your terms and conditions must be located conveniently where they can easily be accessed by the user. A good and commonly used practice is to locate a link to the terms and conditions on the footer of your website so that it can be accessed from each and every page. Further, the terms and conditions must be presented to the user while making any form of registration, submission, or payment on the website.
Always Ask for Confirmation
When the terms and conditions are presented to the user, it is important to ask the user to confirm that they have been read. This confirmation is essentially equivalent to signing a document. The general practice is to have a checkbox that the user has to click on. Some websites even ask the user to type in a phrase like, ‘I have read and accepted the terms and conditions’ to be extra careful. Whenever the terms and conditions are amended or any clause is added or subtracted, it is your responsibility to present the updated terms and conditions to the user. Usually, this is done by sending an email with the terms and conditions to the registered address of the user and asking the user to accept the same. The terms and conditions hold no weight if the user does not confirm acceptance.
Apart from this, the first paragraph of the terms and conditions should be an acceptance of the clauses mentioned. This is to reiterate to your user that by using your website and its services, they agree to the usage policies and accept the terms and conditions. The fact that the user will be notified in the event of any alterations should be explicitly mentioned.
Seek Legal Assistance
Although you can prepare the terms and conditions yourself, it is advisable to consider professional legal assistance while doing the same. This becomes important if your website is conducting business in some form or the other and is not simply an advertising medium.
It is always wise to have fair, clear, and well-laid out terms and conditions for your website, even if you are not collecting personal information or performing financial transactions. In addition to adding legitimacy to your business and increasing the consumer’s faith in your services, it also protects the interests of all the parties involved. It is quite likely that your users won’t read your terms and conditions, as is often the case. However, they still give you a safety net to fall back on in the event of any dispute or contention.