Website terms and conditions, also known as “terms of use”, are an
important part of any website. They may not be the most glamorous part, but
they do play a vital role in setting out the rights and obligations
governing your operation of the site and your visitors’ and customers’ use
of it.
In addition to setting out the rules and covering key issues such as
intellectual property, disclaimers, and liability, your terms and
conditions may also extend to e-commerce. If you sell goods on your
website, your terms and conditions will form the basis for your contracts
with your customers.
Our range of e-commerce terms and conditions is divided into two broad
categories: terms of use and terms of sale. The terms of use govern users’
use of your website itself. The terms of sale deal with the sale of goods.
Website terms of sale should guide your customers through the purchase
process, explaining the formation of the contract between you, and
providing key information on goods, pricing, payment, delivery, ownership,
consumer rights, and cancellation rights.
Simply-Docs Website Terms and Conditions Review
Here at Simply-Docs, we have offered a wide range of website terms and
conditions templates for many years. As with all of our documents, these
are reviewed periodically to ensure that they are kept up to date with
developments in law and best practice. Over the coming months, we will be
reviewing and updating all of our website terms and conditions templates
and adding some new supplementary templates to further enhance our range.
This review began last month, addressing some of our key terms and
conditions for simple, free websites. It now continues with our
business-to-consumer sale of goods templates.
Updated Website Terms and Conditions for B2C Sale of Goods
Each template has been reviewed in-depth and rebuilt from scratch. All have
been updated in line with current best practice. Key parts of each set of
terms and conditions have been re-worded to make them simpler, clearer, and
more user-friendly. In some cases, sections of documents have been
re-organised to make them more logical and easier both for you to work
with, and for your users and customers to follow. Not only does
user-friendliness improve the overall user experience of a website but,
from a legal point of view, it increases the likelihood that standard terms
will be viewed as fair.
New Model Cancellation Form
The Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 introduced the now well-known 14
day “cooling-off period”. In order to make it as easy as possible for
consumers to exercise their cancellation rights, the Regulations include
wording for a model cancellation form.
As part of our new Supporting Website Documents selection, we are now
introducing different versions of the model form for each category of
business-to-consumer e-commerce terms and conditions, beginning with the
sale of goods.
The contents of this Newsletter are for reference purposes only and do not constitute
legal advice. Independent legal advice should be sought in relation to any specific
legal matter.