Terms and conditions are what defines and governs the relationship between a website owner or service provider and its users or customers. You need terms and conditions to avoid any bad surprises and misunderstandings and to ensure a smooth, transparent business relationship with your users.
You wouldn’t enter into a business relationship in real life without signing a formal contract setting out the terms of your agreement. Terms and conditions are the equivalents for your website or mobile application.
Having terms and conditions agreement can help protect your business from disputes that could otherwise have been easily avoided.
If your users or customers have a set of guidelines to refer to and to guide their behavior, they would be hard-pressed to do something that goes against those rules and act surprised about the consequences (account termination, for example). It will also allow you to decide how and where disputes should be handled.
It could also deter third parties from copying or using your work without permission if you include a copyright clause reiterating your ownership of the materials on your website among many other things.
What needs to be included in terms and conditions varies widely depending on the type of business that you operate. As a general rule, it should set out any rules that govern the use of your website or product, include appropriate disclaimers and limitations of liability and confirm copyright ownership.
You can then add on to this depending on the nature of your business. If accounts are created you may want to have rules for termination and suspension. If user-generated content is allowed you may want to address ownership and usage rights of that content, as well as set out what is acceptable or not.
Terms and conditions are essentially a legal agreement or contract between a business and its customers. In other words, if it was properly drafted and fulfills all contract formation requirements, it should be considered legally binding.
It is essential that your users or customers have accepted your terms and conditions for them to be enforceable in a court of law, as this is what creates a contract. This is usually done through a clickwrap agreement, where one has to check a box confirming agreement to your terms and conditions in order to be able to use your service or website.
It is good practice to request active, affirmative consent from users and to avoid pre-ticked checkboxes - this will ensure that they are aware of your terms and allow you to retain the proof of consent.
Your terms and conditions must be conspicuous and it should be clear that use of your website or your products is subject to and governed by those terms. And remember, if you update your terms and conditions, you must notify your users.
At the end of the day, having terms and conditions will not prevent you from being sued but it could certainly deter some and, in the event that you do go in front of the courts, serve to help your case.
No, you should never copy and paste someone else’s terms and conditions. You can of course have a look at what your competitors and other players in your industry are doing for inspiration, but your terms and conditions should be unique to your business.
You decide the rules that govern your website or application, so someone else’s terms and conditions may not even be applicable to your business. You must also take into consideration the particularities of your product or service as well as the inherent liabilities, if any, to include the proper disclaimers and limitations of liability.
Not to mention that copying terms and conditions word for word from another website could be considered an infringement of copyright, which could potentially land you in some serious trouble.
You could get some inspiration from other similar businesses and write your own from scratch, which may be risky unless you have the proper legal background.
You could call on the services of a lawyer to draft the document for you, which will ensure that it contains all required elements and that it will hold up in court.
Or you could use a terms and conditions generator, which will give you a custom and complete agreement in a manner of minutes. This is a cost-effective and reliable solution.
Click here to learn more about how to write terms and conditions using our online generator.
It is good practice to include a link to your terms and conditions in your website footer as this makes it easily accessible to your users.
You should also put your website visitors on notice that terms and conditions apply and request their consent for your agreement to be considered legally binding. You could do so during the sign-up process or with a pop-up when people first land on your website.
If you own an eCommerce website, you may wish to include a reminder during the checkout process mentioning that, by placing an order, the customer acknowledges and agrees to your terms and conditions.
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