Terms and Conditions
Legal Disclaimer
The explanations and information provided on this page are general and broad overviews of how to draft your own Terms and Conditions document. You should not consider this article as legal advice or recommendations on what you should specifically do, as we cannot foresee the specific terms you wish to establish between your business and your clients and visitors. We recommend seeking legal advice to understand and draft your own Terms and Conditions.
Terms and Conditions: Fundamentals
That said, the Terms and Conditions ("T&C") are a set of legally binding terms defined by you as the owner of this website. The T&C establish the legal boundaries governing the activities of website visitors or your customers while they visit or engage with the site. The purpose of the T&C is to establish the legal relationship between the visitors to the site and you as the owner of the site.
The T&C should be defined according to the specific needs and nature of each website. For example, a website that offers products to customers in e-commerce operations requires T&C different from those of a website that solely provides information (such as a blog, homepage, etc.).
The T&C provide you, as the website owner, with the ability to protect yourself from legal liability, but this may vary from one jurisdiction to another, so be sure to seek local legal advice if you are looking to protect yourself from legal liability.
What Should Be Included in the Terms and Conditions Document
In general, the T&C typically address the following issues: who is authorized to use the website, possible payment methods, a statement that the website owner may change their offerings in the future, the types of warranties that the website owner provides to their customers, a reference to intellectual property or copyright issues (if relevant), the right of the website owner to suspend or cancel a member's account, and much more.
For more information, read our article How to Create a Terms and Conditions Policy.