Agreements For Services

Website Documents

If your company has a website, you absolutely must have posted contracts governing your website's use.

We live in a world where anyone can bring a lawsuit against anyone else at any time. Given the fact that nobody will actually negotiate your posted contract and few people will ever read the contract you will probably not lose any customers by posting one-sided contracts.

There are 4 types of agreements you want to display on your site for customers, subscribers, visitors and affiliates to read and agree to.

Your potential customers, subscribers, visitors and affiliates must accept your agreement “as is” if they want to deal with you.

These agreements are fully explored in my ebook, “All You Really Need To Know About Internet Law”

But before you use these agreements make sure you read these simple tips:

Þ Make sure your customer, prospect, website visitor or affiliate knows that by purchasing, downloading, using your stuff or signing up to be an affiliate, the person agrees to everything in your contract.

Þ Make sure the notice about the terms is in a place where people will see it before purchasing, downloading, using your products, information or site or becoming an affiliate.

Þ Provide the complete contract on the site so that the person has the opportunity to read it if they want.

Þ It would be advisable to require the person to do something, or take some action to show that they agree to the terms of the contract. Some courts will not enforce website agreements unless the user, customer or affiliate does something to “sign” the agreement – like point and click on a button or check a box indicating “I Agree.”

Affiliate Agreements

These contracts between you and anyone wanting to sell your product are necessary in order to set forth the terms upon which affiliates are bound to when advertising and selling your products.

Without a posted privacy policy, you as a website owner leave yourself open to problems not only from visitors but from Federal Government Enforcement Agencies like the Federal Trade Commission. The government strictly enforces issues regarding children’s privacy when it comes to collecting information.

Software License Agreements

These agreements protect you by setting forth the terms under which a purchaser of your software is obligated if they buy and use your software. There are two agreements in this section. One is used if the software is downloaded directly from your site and the other is used if the software is shipped to the purchaser in hard form such as a CD.

A user agreement can offer tremendous legal benefit both in lower risk and ensuring remedies for websites. It sets forth both who can use the site and permitted uses it also limits the site owners responsibility to the user.