When developing or building a website, there is a huge amount to consider to make sure it plays the role you want it to in attracting and retaining customers. But UX and responsive design aside, you’ll also need to make sure you dot the i’s and cross the t’s from a legal perspective. Here are the five key legal documents that you would expect on a website: .
This document governs how you provide the website and its content and how visitors may use your website. You may either include in the website T&Cs or create a separate acceptable use policy to set out rules in preventing the unauthorised reproduction of material and undesirable user behaviour (for example, hacking, reverse engineering, introducing viruses and uploading illegal or defamatory content).
This will notify users (data subjects) of the website of the data you collect about them, the security procedure that you take in respect of the data, their rights and your liability and the data protection law. You may also require a mobile app privacy policy if you collect personal data when providing a mobile app. If you want to use the users’ personal data for marketing will need to obtain their consent through a registration form or data capture.
If you use cookies, this policy will detail your use of cookies, their purposes, how you use them and any third party having access to the data. Depending on the use of the cookies, you may need to obtain the user's explicit consent.
Separately from the website terms & conditions, these documents specify your terms of sale and how the customers can order the goods, services or digital content from you. Sometimes you may require an end user licence agreement to govern how an individual end user may use your goods, services or digital content if you provide to a business.
This document will provide the key information about your business, operation and offering in a digestible manner, which is especially important if you sell directly to consumers.
