What to include in your terms and conditions
Do you ever wonder why the heck you have a terms and conditions page on your website? Do you know what to include in your terms and conditions? Well, let’s chat about that today. I think it’s so important when it comes to the legal part of your business to know why you need to do certain things and not just blindly doing it because someone said so.
Terms and conditions (or Terms of Service) is an agreement that you put on your website that your visitors know how to behave when they are visiting your site. By setting out these expectations, it is easier to defend your right as the owner not allowing them on your website. Expectations are so much easier if you have a list telling someone what to do. If a visitor does violate your terms and service, you can ban them from your website or even sue them if it’s detrimental. Now that you know what terms and conditions are for, let’s get into what to include in your terms and conditions.
Refund policy
If you sell services or goods, then you need to have a refund policy. Your refund policy needs to be consistent across the board. If your refund policy isn’t consistent, then any chargeback will likely err on the side of the purchaser. Do you want to lose thousand dollar chargebacks? I didn’t think so. By having a refund policy, the purchaser agrees to how you handle refunds, and it’s harder to argue against it. Also, I recommend that you add refund policies to the pages of your products/services. Your refund policy should include the following:
- The numbers of days a customer has to return a product
- What kind of refund you will give to the customer after they return an item
- Who will pay for the return? If you sell digital products, whether you accept refunds, and if so, in what cases.
Intellectual property
Not sure what intellectual property is? Intellectual property is a work or invention that is the result of creativity. Intellectual property includes copyrights, trademarks, patents, and trade secrets. The content you produce on your website is copyrighted material. The name of your website and any courses you create are trademarks. The ultimate protection you get is by registering your intellectual property with the right federal agency. By including how people can use your intellectual property, it will keep visitors clear about whether or not they can share your content. Some people don’t want to share any of their blog content, but there are other websites like BuzzFeed who encourage their visitors to share.
Also, if you register your trademarks, you must defend them, or you’ll dilute your brand and will no longer have the same type of protection. If you aren’t protecting your intellectual property, then it’s hard for people to distinguish you from the millions out there. So if someone violates your terms regarding your intellectual property, you should include the consequences, such as deactivating their account or sue them for damages.
Limitation of liability
A limitation of liability clause limits the amount and types of damages one party can recover from the other party. You can’t put a financial cap on death or personal injury arising out of negligence or fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation. You must follow the state’s laws, and the limitation must be reasonable, clear, and conspicuous. If your limitation is confusing or contradictory, the court will construe it in favor of the client/customer.
Termination
Because your website is yours, you can stop people from coming to it, if they don’t abide by your terms and conditions. When you have a termination clause, you can tell your visitors the expectations you have from them when they visit your site. If a visitor can’t follow this, then you are allowed to terminate use. Termination is especially useful for those who have memberships and subscriptions. Most termination clauses contain two standard points:
1. If you violate the terms and conditions, the owner can revoke access;
And 2. The business is allowed to terminate for any reason at the discretion of the business.
Some things that businesses include for grounds for termination are stealing your intellectual property, making disparaging comments, and not paying the fee if it’s a membership or subscription service.
Incorporate your privacy policy
By incorporating your privacy policy by reference, your visitor agrees to follow your terms and conditions AND privacy policy. It’s a 2 for 1, and who doesn’t love that?
Example: Our Privacy Policy incorporated by reference into these Terms and Conditions.
Bonus: Include a clickwrap so that your visitor has to expressly agree to your terms. I’m still trying to figure out how to add a clickwrap pop up without a ton of pop-ups on my page. But in short, a clickwrap is a pop up that says, “I agree.” It is a legally secure and easy way of creating binding agreements with your visitors online. There are a few legal cases that discuss clickwrap.
Now that you know, are you going to include these sections in your terms and conditions? Do you have terms and conditions on your website at all? If you don’t, you can grab it from my contract template shop. It takes about 15-20 minutes to fill in, and costs 1/2 the price of hiring an attorney.