Website Terms and Conditions contain information about your organization, your site, and user behaviours and rights. A court will reference the document if there is ever a case against your organization, so you should be thorough and detailed when writing it.
LawDepot’s template makes the process easy with a simple and accessible questionnaire that you can fill out in minutes.
As the website’s owner, start by providing your or your organization’s full name, the website’s domain, and the province or territory where the website is based. Your Terms and Conditions will be customized according to the laws of the jurisdiction you choose.
Provide a way for users to contact you, such as a phone number, email, and address. Some websites also have a feedback form as a way of contact, so include this information if you have one.
Every website has specific functions and attributes that are important to note when creating your Terms and Conditions. To ensure your Terms and Conditions include the necessary information, you’ll need to note:
- If there’s a minimum age requirement for users on your site
- If users can create an account on your site
- If users can buy goods or services on your site
- If users can share their own content or create public posts on your site
- The payment methods your site accepts, if applicable
For any websites that sell goods or services, you’ll need to include information about what kind of goods or services you offer. Specify if the purchases are one-time-only or if your organization offers a subscription service. For subscription services, you should also indicate if it renews automatically and what your cancellation policy is like.
3. Third-party contributions
Specify if your website sells products or offers services from third-party companies. You also need to clarify if your site will contain ads or links for third-party sites.
4. User behaviours
You can limit user behaviours by specifying unacceptable uses of your website. Some behaviours you might want to prohibit users from engaging with are:
- Harassing or abusing other users
- Violating the rights of other users
- Committing copyright infringement against the site owners or any third party on the site
- Hacking user accounts
- Committing fraudulent acts
- Posting material that may be deemed inappropriate or offensive
You can also specify any other user behaviour you wish to prohibit that might be specific to your site.
5. Guarantees
Depending on the nature of your website, you can include a guarantee in your Terms and Conditions. A guarantee is a promise on behalf of the company or entity to fulfill certain conditions.
For example, suppose a fitness instructor is selling an e-book with a 30-day personal training guide. The Terms and Conditions might include a guarantee that if they ever update that particular e-book, everyone who previously purchased a copy will receive an updated edition.
6. Disputes
You can choose to include details on how you will resolve any disputes between you and your website’s users. Conflicts can be resolved with mediation, arbitration, or mediation then arbitration.
You can also set who will be responsible for the costs of the mediation or arbitration. You’ll have the options of:
- Splitting the cost equally
- Holding the losing party responsible
- Not including any details about costs
Note that even if you include this section on disputes, your Terms and Conditions will still allow disputes to be brought to a small claims court. Users of your site can make claims of intellectual property infringement and injunctive relief.
7. Additional clauses
If there’s anything specific to your website that you think is crucial to include, you can write your own additional clauses. Some guidelines for writing custom clauses are:
- Write your clauses clearly and in plain language
- Limit them to one paragraph in length
- Use a new clause for each unique point
- Use any predefined terms, such as Site, in your clauses
8. Choose an effective date
Set the date on which your Website Terms and Conditions will come into effect.
