Creating a website for your brand can take months of hard work. But before your site goes “live”, you’ll want to ensure you have your Terms and Conditions (“T&Cs”) and Privacy Policy in place and accessible to visitors in order to limit your liability (Yep! Even websites can lead to lawsuits!).

Your website’s T&Cs outline the rules and regulations of the website. It’s a legal contract between your website and its users. T&Cs that are posted on your site informs users how they must behave when browsing your site and confirms that by visiting your site, and clicking a consent or acknowledgement box, they agree to abide by these rules and guidelines. This applies to any visitor of your site, regardless of whether or not they purchase your services, and is separate from a client service agreement. Your client contract covers terms for when someone buys a product or services, or signs up to join your program, and often has specific terms tailored to your offering. Both contracts are crucial to protecting yourself, growing your brand and being legally compliant.

Website T&Cs allow you to establish ownership of your website content and prevent abuse by outlining the behaviours you prohibit on your site, like harassment or spamming. T&Cs also limit liability, meaning the ability of being sued or otherwise held accountable at law. By posting disclaimers and waivers, depending on the information on your site and the services or products you’re selling, you’re making it clear that users can’t sue you and you’re being clear about what you are and aren’t providing. Your T&Cs include other legal protections, such as terms around warranties, no guarantees of results, no refunds, no responsibility for technology failures, rules around licenses or sharing content, or any other business policies you may have. T&Cs can prevent harmful lawsuits and can protect against your website being held accountable for any errors or misinformation. 

** T&Cs are legally binding and you should allow visitors to actively consent to these Terms, making pop-ups very common or having acknowledgement boxes at a checkout page.

** If you change your T&Cs, you should notify your visitors of this change.

The second legal piece your website needs is a Privacy Policy. This is a statement made on behalf of you or your company outlining how you collect, use and store customer or client data that’s being gathered online. This could be through intake forms, blog comments, billing or other inquiries made through your site. This pertains to data collected even before someone becomes a client or customer, but as soon as they visit your site, and so you need a Privacy Policy posted that visitors opt into. It provides transparency regarding collecting, using, disclosing, protecting, and managing personal information. Your website’s Privacy Policy may also provide information on cookies and how you will use them to improve a site visitor’s browsing experience. You must also provide a contact if people inquire about their data or request any deletion. 

If you’re in the health and wellness sector, it’s imperative to have a Privacy Policy that meets your industry guidelines and outlines how you’ll use and collect sensitive and personal information, such as health history, personal information, payment details and other confidential information.

** Note that a Privacy Policy is required by law if the site collects any personal data.

** Best practice is to update your Privacy Policy annually.

If you’re looking to set up your website with T&Cs and a Privacy Policy that adheres to best practices, check out our affordable DIY contract templates here to ensure you have the proper legal protection for your site and your business.

We make it simple to input all the terms and conditions that are relevant to your business!

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact us at: hello@awecontracts.com