9 Top Tips for Trading on the Internet

By Kim Highley of Virtuoso Legal

1. Ensure that your Terms and Conditions of Website use, Terms and Conditions of Trade (Goods/Services), Privacy Policy and Cookies Policy are brought to the attention of your website users on your landing page. 

2. Customers should be required to click on a button to confirm acceptance of all Terms and Conditions of Trade before they can place orders.

3. Always include a Copyright Notice on your website.

4. Consider registering any company name / business name and any logos or devices used for marketing as trade marks so that no one can copy them.

5. Consider registering domain names you may wish to use in the future for your online trading.

6. Web Transactions must comply with the Distance Selling Regulations therefore you must provide as a minimum –

• Information about the supplier and the goods/services should be supplied to the Customer in good time before contract is concluded.
• Notification of right to cancel goods/services within 7 working days with full refund.
•   Check that your returns policy complies with the regulations.

7. If you are trading using a website with restricted access to password users then consider how you will handle this data to avoid any data protection and liability issues.

                 

8. If you are trading wider than the UK, consider whether your website complies with foreign regulations e.g. advertising, financial services regulation, purchases of goods/services.  Consult with lawyers in any relevant countries.

9. If you are taking payment using merchant services (i.e. credit card and other payments on line) then you should consider fraud and fraud protection. The banks and merchant service providers will want to see professionally drafted terms of trade BEFORE providing you with merchant services facilities account.