Terms and Conditions
- By Jane Dawson
- Published 01/21/2011
- Web Development
- Unrated
If you use a website for your business you will need terms and conditions of usage for visitors. These website give information about the website content and how visitors are and are not permitted to use it. It help to protect you from legal actions and in some countries, such as the United Kingdom, there is a legal requirement to provide them.
What do terms and conditions cover?
The material on your website needs to cover all of the activities and information relevant to your website. For example, if you have a website that discusses healthcare issues, you will need to caution visitors that the health advice obtained on the site does not substitute for the advice provided by an individual medical provider. If you are selling second hand dolls, your terms and conditions need to discuss issues such as condition of merchandise, returns, limits of liability for problems, etc.
Some of the typical areas that are covered in sheets are:
Privacy
Copyright
Contracts
Returns, Refunds & Losses
Complaints
Website partners
Contact
How do you start?
There are a couple of ways to begin.
Blank Sheet
Think about what your website is intended to do and what should your website avoid doing? Who will use it and what kind of interaction will you have with them? What kinds of risks are associated with using the site? What kind of liabilities might you have with the site?
Once you have a list o
f potential issues, think about the topics within a page that would encompass those issues. If you are collecting financial information for your retail site, you will need topics related to use of confidential information, returns, charge backs, losses, back orders. If you have a blog that people can post to, you will need topics such as copyright infringement, right to monitor and remove materials, appropriate language and so on.
Organize your topics in a logical way such as in order of importance or in the way that your customer will go through the purchasing process.
Begin writing the terms and conditions as methodically and plainly as possible.
Search and Learn
The alternative way to approach this project is to look at the sites of retailers who are engaged in the type of business you are and see what their pages say. Use their work as the basis for creating your own.
Best of Both Worlds
It may seem silly to recreate the wheel, i.e., why devise your own when there are so many available on the Internet? However, there is value in doing your own thinking first and then filling in the blanks by learning from others. The reality is, others may not have thought of all the issues you came up with in your process. You may want to address some issues that are not addressed on most other sites. If you start with established work, it is hard to add your original thinking.
The UK governmental website, Business Link, provides sample text as well as sample of other types of policies and disclaimers that might be necessary for your site; it is a great resource to visit.
What do terms and conditions cover?
The material on your website needs to cover all of the activities and information relevant to your website. For example, if you have a website that discusses healthcare issues, you will need to caution visitors that the health advice obtained on the site does not substitute for the advice provided by an individual medical provider. If you are selling second hand dolls, your terms and conditions need to discuss issues such as condition of merchandise, returns, limits of liability for problems, etc.
Some of the typical areas that are covered in sheets are:
Privacy
Copyright
Contracts
Returns, Refunds & Losses
Complaints
Website partners
Contact
How do you start?
There are a couple of ways to begin.
Blank Sheet
Think about what your website is intended to do and what should your website avoid doing? Who will use it and what kind of interaction will you have with them? What kinds of risks are associated with using the site? What kind of liabilities might you have with the site?
Once you have a list o
Organize your topics in a logical way such as in order of importance or in the way that your customer will go through the purchasing process.
Begin writing the terms and conditions as methodically and plainly as possible.
Search and Learn
The alternative way to approach this project is to look at the sites of retailers who are engaged in the type of business you are and see what their pages say. Use their work as the basis for creating your own.
Best of Both Worlds
It may seem silly to recreate the wheel, i.e., why devise your own when there are so many available on the Internet? However, there is value in doing your own thinking first and then filling in the blanks by learning from others. The reality is, others may not have thought of all the issues you came up with in your process. You may want to address some issues that are not addressed on most other sites. If you start with established work, it is hard to add your original thinking.
The UK governmental website, Business Link, provides sample text as well as sample of other types of policies and disclaimers that might be necessary for your site; it is a great resource to visit.
Jane Dawson
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