Four Tips for Legal Compliance When Creating a Website

When you create a website for your business, there are many things you need to consider. In addition to thinking about obvious areas such as design, aesthetics and content of your eCommerce website, you must also consider website legal requirements. Many areas of law apply to websites. Therefore, if you fail to ensure that your eCommerce website is legally compliant, you could face serious financial penalties. This article provides four tips for legal compliance when creating a website.

1. Legal Advice 

A crucial tip for a legally compliant website is to take advice from a lawyer. Many legal rules apply to eCommerce websites. These include:

• data protection laws;
• equality law;
• intellectual property laws, and
• consumer law.

Seeking legal advice before and during your website creation can ensure legal compliance. Additionally, legal advice can minimise the potential for future disputes regarding your website’s non-compliance. 

2. Sound Terms and Conditions  

To help ensure your website creation is legally compliant, you should ensure that your eCommerce website has sound and thorough terms and conditions. You are legally required to have terms and conditions for the website and separate ones for your sales. But making sure these are robust is vital for legally compliant website creation.

Terms and conditions are in place to protect both you and your customers. However, terms that are not up to scratch will not carry out the role you intend for them. For example, your website terms and conditions lay out the rules between you and your website users. Therefore, the terms can help limit your liability when users rely on your website information. 

3. GDPR Compliance

An essential tip to ensure legally compliant website creation is to ensure your website complies with all aspects of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The GDPR is a UK law relating to how you use your customer’s data. It is relevant to many parts of your eCommerce website.  

This means you need to ensure, for example, that  you:

• explain how you process personal data;
• be clear about how you store personal data and
• gain consent to collect personal data.

To be legally compliant, your website will need to contain things to ensure GDPR compliance, such as:

• a privacy notice;
• consent for cookie use;
• opt-in forms for marketing; and
• security.

GDPR Essentials Factsheet

This factsheet sets out how your business can become GDPR compliant.

Download Now

4. Accessibility

A vital tip to ensure legal compliance when creating a website is to be aware of accessibility for websites. This is because it is illegal for website providers to discriminate against users who have a disability. Disabilities can involve:

• visual;
• motor; and 
• cognitive disabilities.

As an eCommerce website owner, you need to ensure that access to your website is equal for all who wish to use it. As a result, you must make reasonable adjustments to meet this legal requirement. If a website is not accessible, it can cause discrimination against an individual if they suffer a loss of some type. This could be financial or even emotional. A website user who suffers discrimination by your business can bring civil action against your eCommerce business. You could also face a fine of up to £5,000.

Key Takeaways

When you create your website, you want to ensure it is legally compliant. To ensure legal compliance, you should:

• obtain legal advice; 
• include sound terms and conditions;
• include website features according to the GDPR; and
• ensure your website is accessible to all.

If you need help understanding tips for legally compliant website creation, LegalVision’s experienced eCommerce lawyers can assist as part of our LegalVision membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents for a low monthly fee. So call us today on 0808 196 8584 or visit our membership page.