If you’re setting up a brand to sell online for the first time, or expanding your fashion website to target different customers, there are a number of legal issues you need to consider. Learn about website building keeping all the legal policies in mind.
Following on from last week’s Building A Website – The Legal Steps, Part 1, where Tahir Basheer offered advice on finding a domain name, your website content and data, this week he concludes the two part-series.
There are legal considerations to make while website building for your brand, especially a transactional one. Here I look at the terms and conditions for websites, social media and e-commerce, as well as mobile content and VAT.
Website Visitors
The terms and conditions of your website building are effectively the contract you hold with the visitors to your site. In this way, the terms and conditions are extremely important. Many people use generic website terms and conditions and therefore miss crucial aspects of their business model within the terms. You need to tailor your relationship with your visitors depending on the specific circumstances.
Amongst other things, you should consider the following:
1. A statement that all rights in the site belong to you, for example your copyright and trademarks.
2. A restriction on what visitors can do on your site – for example a restriction on them engaging on illegal activity.
3. A disclaimer regarding the performance of your site. You don’t want people to be able to claim you have liability if your website has technical problems.
4. Reference to your privacy policy.
5. Where your website has a login there should be an obligation on visitors not to pass their login details on to anyone else.
6. Information about your business, for example your contact details.
Social Media
The same issues regarding user-generated content, website terms and privacy also apply to your social media outlets so make sure you establish terms of use and privacy policies that reflect your actives on these sites. In addition you need to be aware that these social media providers will have their own terms and conditions governing your activities that may vary.
Read our Beginner’s Guide to Twitter and Facebook
E-Commerce
You should also structure your terms and conditions to suit your payment and stocking processes. For example, most websites state that a customer merely places an ‘offer’ to a website when they order. This means that the website is not contractually bound to honour that offer. This is particularly important when your stock levels need to be verified before completing an order.
You will need to comply with a number of pieces of legislation when selling products or services online. New legislation, in the form of the Consumer Rights Bill, will soon come in which will replace some of the existing laws around distance selling. The Consumer Rights Bill requires businesses to provide certain pre-contract information and clearly label any obligation to pay before a payment. It also gives consumers rights for a refund 14 days after returning any goods. Note that it also imposes obligations on websites selling digital content, e.g. music. You should also be aware of different legislation if you sell products or services outside of the United Kingdom.
One key thing to remember is that you should request users’ specific consent (for example, by requiring them to click on an ‘agree’ button) when presenting them with any terms.
Mobilising Content
The majority of websites will now try and optimise themselves in some way for users accessing the site on mobiles, either by having a mobile app, a mobile website or a responsive/adaptive website. The legal issues discussed here are equally as applicable for your mobile offering but you have the added conundrum of presenting things like your terms and conditions in a way that makes them readable on a mobile device. Enhancing the user experience of your legal statements will help them be enforceable if a dispute ever arose.
VAT
From 1 January 2015, new regulations came into place where VAT on digital services sold in the EU will be chargeable in the place of purchase rather than the place of supply. This change applies to all UK traders, not just those who are VAT registered. This is very important, as many traders with no experience of VAT will now have to mobilise quickly to comply with the ruling. However, this change does only apply to those traders who make supplies of digital services.
