Guide to our Terms of Use of Website Template

Our Terms of Use of Website template is for use by a business trading online or other non-trading organisations that are online. It provides a basic outline of the ways in which customers and other visitors to your website are permitted by you to access and use your website.  It may be used for websites running Internet chat rooms or forums and also for business websites.  It includes an “acceptable use” policy (particularly relevant to chat rooms and forums).

These terms of use do not include a “privacy policy” or “cookies policy”, nor do they cover your selling goods or services via your website. If you charge for access to the website, e.g. via a subscription or membership fee, then you should have separate terms regarding the supply of services. Templates for these are available separately from Legalo. See our guide to website legal requirements for details of all legal requirements.

Clauses in these Terms of Use

Introduction – Insert your company name and a hyperlink to your privacy policy where indicated. A privacy policy template is available separately from Legalo (which also includes a cookies policy) should you need one.

 Numbered clauses

1. Definitions – This clause defines the main terms used here.

• Domain Name, etc – insert your website’s domain name, company name, company number, registered office address and main business address. If applicable, insert your trading name and whether it is a registered or unregistered trademark and then your company name. If not, then delete this sentence.
• Website – insert your website’s domain name.

2. Access to website – Adapt clause 2.1 if necessary to refer to the main features/functions of your website. If customers cannot have an account with you, delete the whole of sentence that refers to the customer control panel and the sentence that follows about registration.

3. Use of website and services – This clause states the restrictions on people reusing copyright material on your site and refers to your own intellectual property rights in the site (e.g. trademark(s); copyright). In clause 3.6, if you sell via your website, then you need separate terms and conditions of sale (a suitable template is available separately from Legalo) and here you should insert a hyperlink to them.

4. Site uptime – This clause refers to the fact that your site is not guaranteed always to be available, but that you would try and warn users of planned downtime for maintenance (for example this might be by a notice posted on the site – see clause 9.5).

5. Visitor conduct – This clause covers the “acceptable use” policy and states what sort of conduct is unacceptable when using your website.

6. Your account and password – This clause deals with passwords for customer or user accounts. Insert a contact email in case of issues with logging in and passwords.

7. Links to and from other websites – This clause covers (a) a disclaimer of liability for other websites your site may have links to and (b) other sites linking to your site.

8. Disclaimer and exclusion of liability – This clause is an extensive one that limited your liability or excludes your liability. You should still do your best to avoid the site causing problems for users, e.g. by keeping the site secure against viruses, hackers and spambots, keeping users’ data safe and monitoring any information posted by users for breach of your acceptable use policy (e.g. trolling, obscene or defamatory posts).

9. Miscellaneous – This covers a number of minor areas, e.g. how you can send notices to the users.

10. Governing jurisdiction – Where the parties are all based in the UK, the jurisdiction should be exclusively that of England. Please note that if a consumer is based in Wales, Northern Ireland or Scotland, then they may still be able to sue you in their local courts.

Version – insert the month and year. If you update the terms later on, remember to update this date.