Importance of terms of service page on a website

While you are not bound by the law to include terms of service or terms of use page for your website, it is nonetheless a smart move to ask your developer to design this page. The sites collecting user data like email addresses and other personal information are required to include a “Privacy Policy” page.

This article is aimed at putting forward the importance of terms and conditions page for a website and why you will be better off having this rather dull section integrated into your site.

Regardless of anyone reading the terms of service section of your website or not, it aims to provide you with a legal backup and several other advantages discussed below. This is why most of the sites that you come across tend to have this section majorly at the end of their webpage.

Terms of service, not just a collection of clauses that a viewer would most probably skip but a safeguard measure that will keep your business in safe hands.

You can get this page integrated while your developer is carrying out the rest of the designing part for your website. Having said that,

let’s dive right into understanding the importance of terms of service for your site.

Prevention of abuse

Whenever you are offering any product or service to your potential customers, it isn’t tough to understand that there might be certain users who tend to misuse your offerings. These users might be those who are indulged in posting defamatory content, spamming other users or anything that can be counted as abuse. Including terms of service, the page makes clear that such activities will not be tolerated on your website and you become viable to take action against such users.

This page sets the ground rules and various guidelines that any user of your product or service is bound to follow. In case you spot anything fishy on your website, you can simply ban the user from accessing your site anymore. This can also be a temporary ban that prevents the user for a certain time, thus providing them with a clear warning to not repeat these actions.

Along with this, terms of use page on your website will also set conditions for the content owned by the users associated with your website. This page prevents the users from being abused along with safeguarding the content present on your site, be it owned by you or your users.

Ownership right of your content

This turns out to be a crucial reason why you need to include terms of service page on your website as copyright issues might often be challenging to handle. You, as the website owner, hold the ownership right of the content like your logo, website design and another content present on it except that owned by the users. In order to protect the copyright of the content owned by you, it is advisable to include terms of use page in your site.

Terms of service tend to protect the ownership rights with the inclusion of “the Intellectual Property clause” which clearly states that your content can not be used by anyone else without your prior permission. While mentioning the terms and conditions, you make your site secured from any misuse of the content by anyone else.

If anyone makes unauthorized use of your website content, you will have the legal right to take action against that person. This way you will be able to safeguard your copyrighted content from being used without your approval.

Limit liability

Any user can hold you responsible for the accuracy of the information provided by your website if you haven’t mentioned any clause regarding the errors present in the content. This is precisely where the terms and conditions page comes into the picture and prevents the owner from being responsible for such errors in the published content.

In other words, you are going to limit the liability as a website owner by including this page on your site. This is done by putting a clear disclaimer that you shall not hold any accountability for the accuracy of the content your website has. Thus, it becomes clear that including terms of use page in your site can restrict any user from taking any legal action against you in case there is an error in the content.

This page also comes handy when there arises an unknown glitch causing any user to be unable to access the content. All in all, you get to save yourself from being sued because of any server outages or issues caused by the content that may have errors.

Helps to build a safe community

It is most likely that your website is going to include some or other form of community interaction, be it the comment section, personal profiles or several forums. Internet trolls might cause troubles by posting spam. Thus you need to find a way to keep such people away from causing mishaps. This is where terms of use page can be helpful as this page chalks out the conditions in which you can remove any abusive comment posted by any user.

At the same time, this page lays down a legal justification of keeping such trolls at bay and safeguarding your website community. This is why you should include this page if you truly aim towards building a healthy and safe community page on your website.

Building a safe community is indeed a taxing procedure, and there goes a lot in the process of continually removing the abusive content posted by any user. Thus, mentioning terms and conditions gives you the right to remove anything that you don’t find suitable for your website. This paves a way to building user trust along with ensuring that your product and services are not misused in any way.

Set the governing law

Including a page mentioning the terms and conditions of your website allows you to lay down the governing laws related to the area in which you are running the business. This way you can easily handle the jurisdiction issues that arise during the operation of your website. Terms and conditions of a website clearly state all the laws that bind the users of that site along with mentioning the permissions that any user has.

Setting the governing laws is essential as you might need to carry out various legalities once your website is running in its full-fledged form. This is why it becomes imperative to include terms of use page, and you should ask your developer to integrate this into your website.

This will provide you with a legal backup during the times when you’re facing any legal issue related to the business you’re running. If any user takes legal action against the website owner, terms and conditions of the website can be helpful in easing the process for the owner. Thus, your site should have a dedicated section for terms of use that clearly states all the clauses regarding the governing laws.

Account termination

Another advantage of adding terms of use page is that it provides you with the right of terminating the accounts of users posting any malicious content. You can clearly mention the set of activities that can lead to the account termination of any user so that they can refrain from doing such things. You need to understand that removing the access from your website can cause trouble if you have not mentioned any clauses for the same.

Thus, the terms and conditions page of your website is what gives you a legal right to prevent any user from accessing the content anymore. If you have clearly stated the conditions that can lead to account termination, you will be legally justified to take such an action. Any banned user would not be able to take any legal action against you in any such case.

You might also need to terminate certain accounts in case any user contacts you regarding the misbehavior caused due to any other person using your website. In such cases, you can readily stop these user accounts from accessing your content and causing any further trouble.

Wrapping Up: Terms of service

The above discussion makes clear that terms of service page are going to come handy when you want to run your website without any trouble. This page is not only helpful in securing your content but also creating a safe space for your potential users.

Whether your site is collecting user data or not, you should include this page because there are a plethora of legal issues that can be handled if you have this page in your site.

Moreover, it wouldn’t cost you a fortune to get an additional page designed by your developer when this page provides you with significant advantages.

It is advisable to chalk out all the terms and conditions that you need to include in the terms of use page before you contact your developer. You can have a look at the way your competitors have added this page in order to pick the best practices for your own site.