Legal pages are important for your website. Building a website doesn’t just revolve around getting a domain, registering, getting hosted, optimizing and etc. It is also a prerequisite to pay attention to legal pages in order to operate without having legal issues.
Legal pages will help you operate your business without breaking the law. It doesn’t just protect the contents of your website, but most of all it also gives security to the visitors or traffic on your website.
Read and see what are legal pages for your website, why you need them and how can you get them done and set up on your website.
What are Legal Pages for your website?
Legal pages on your website are instruments to build trust between you and the visitors of your website. When building a website, you do not want to miss a single aspect. And from the word itself, Legal Pages helps with the legal aspect of operating your website.
Ever gone to a website and seen a box that needs to be checked where it contains “Privacy Policy” or “Accept Cookies”? Those are actual samples of legal pages. So on privacy policies, for example, when you checked that out on the website and if your read it carefully ( which most people do not because it is awfully long sometimes ) lets you know what data the website is collecting from the customers and how they will use it.
4 Types of Legal Pages Essential to your Website
Here are four types of Legal Pages that are extremely important for your website. The type of Legal Pages that suits you boils down to what type of website you have. It is important that before you launch your website, you already know what type of Legal Pages you will use.
Cookie Policy
This one has been a controversial type of legal page. When “Cookies” are seen by people online, they immediately think that their private data is now leaked and is not secured anymore because the website knows them already.
What exactly is a cookie policy? A cookie policy is a summary of all the trackers that are currently being employed on your website, together with complete information on each one that is made accessible to end users so they can gain an understanding of how their private data is being handled when using your website.
So it is important when setting up a website that you have this one. Cookie policies are crucial for building trust between you and the visitors, primarily if you’re gathering personal information, as cookies can be connected to personal data gathering. They have a choice of whether to accept it or decline it.
Private Policy
Websites should definitely value privacy. A privacy policy serves the objective of communicating to the public that your company takes security very seriously. It’s crucial to tell these consumers of how you will gather, utilize, and secure their information because many businesses operate online storefronts where user data is gathered.
You do not want to leave your traffic wondering, worrying, and unsure of the things that happen to their data.
Terms and Conditions
This type of Legal Page is very important together with a Return and Refund policy when you are a website that allows selling to take place on your website. Cookie and Privacy policies are standards for website Legal pages, but this is particularly important for websites that sell.
This type of Legal Page is not really a pre-requisite by law but this is probably one of the smartest things to do. This can decrease or even vanish your liability if in case a customer brings you to court. And this Legal Page will also help your content stay protected.
Return and Refund Policy
A return and refund policy establishes the circumstances in which clients may return items they’ve bought from your webshop and if you’ll compensate them or not. Additionally, it will inform clients of the window of opportunity for refunds.
This is important to let the customers know to what extent will accept a return or refund. This way, customers know what to expect in this aspect and will not pursue a refund or return if they know that you have a policy about it And you will not be liable for anything that does not come in the policy on your website.
How to get them Done?
The best thing about all of this is that you can save so much money because you do not need a lawyer!
You do not need to hire a lawyer to make all these policies for you.
You have been hearing terms such as legal, law, policy, regulations and etc. which might make you intimidated and might be the reason why you will not pursue launching your website.
But fear not!
There are generators that will help you with these policies by using their templates!
Terms and Conditions Generator
Return and Refund Policy Generator
Just click each of them to use the templates, and save a lot of money from not hiring lawyers but still be able to get quality on the legal aspect of the business.
On top of all these policies, you need a GDPR Accept box, pay attention to the next section to know all about it!
GDPR Accept
GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation, the EU’s general privacy law. It started in the year 2018 and ensures the security of everybody’s private information by demanding businesses have reliable procedures for collecting and storing it. GDPR is a privacy law that holds permission in high regard. Permission is permitted under the GDPR, let the yes be a yes and a no is a no. Some techniques employed in the past to give permission are no longer acceptable.
In the GDPR accept box, people must not be obligated or forced to check any answer they don’t want the box, it must be given freely to them. Call-to-actions should be neutral and not forced in any way. And of course, the person must have a clear understanding of what they are agreeing to. The statements should be easy to understand and clear for them.
You need to comply with this especially if you are:
- Based on the EU
- If you are offering products or services to people in the EU (regardless if you are for profit or not)
- Keeping an eye or assessing on how people behave in the EU (profiling)
- When your business process data
What should be the elements of Consent under GDPR?
You have to be very careful with this one. If you have one of these elements that do not align with your consent, then it is all void and not under the GDPR.
According to Article 4 of GDPR, the elements of consent must be:
- Freely given – There should be no pressure in any way for the user, they must be able to decide and choose however they want.
- Specific – The user should be asked to a SPECIFIC type of data processing.
- Informed – This one supports number two, which means that the specific data processing is explained very well in a manner that any user of the website may understand.
- Unambiguous – There is no need for hifalutin words, instead the words used here must not be technical but as understandable as possible.
- Clear affirmative action – The user must consent clearly to doing an action, may it be to do or say something.
If you forgot just one of these elements, your consent us not under GDPR under any circumstance.
So when should you not ask for consent?
- When the transactions involved core services, it is best to use a contract for that
- When it is a legal obligation and you are REQUIRED by LAW to process personal data
- Your customers would fairly assume you use their personal data in a way that poses little danger to them and has a minimum negative effect on them. And basically, there are no risks for the customers.
These are the times when you should not ask for consent anymore. But you should ask for consent only if you are letting them know that you are offering a non-essential service which they have a choice to accept or not. No obliging and forcing in any way. For example:
- Gathering their data
- Accepting email marketing from your business
- Use cookies
If there is anything that involves “processing” of any “data” that happens in your company, then you need to comply with the GDPR. Collecting payment details, gathering a mail list, or even keeping an IP address in your log files is actually counted as processing. It is best for your business to comply with this. This may be new to the non-EU business, but to them, this is a general law to protect their data and privacy.
One of the good things about this is that your GDPR Accept can be installed with a free plugin for WordPress!
You read that right!
Get this plug-in and install this to your website for free!
Why do you need them?
Legal Pages are important for your website and you need them to be able to:
- Build trust between you and the customers
- Assure your customers that you value the privacy
- Protect your business from legal issues
- Protect the content of your website whatever happens
- Protect your customers’ privacy
- Professionalism
- Help you operate your websites without violating any law
You need to be mindful of ALL the aspects, especially in the online world. You need to protect not only your website and the contents and data in it but the also people that visit your website too. By implementing such detail in your website, you can make sure that your website is efficient and compliant with all applicable laws, protecting your enterprise and website visitors by restricting your exposure to liability and making sure that your website conforms with legal reporting requirements and consumer rights, along with other laws.
