E-Commerce law has to do with proper contracting through a website and that’s actually something of an interesting issue. Websites need to have a number of things in order to make sure that you have run them properly and that you have a good relationship with your users. Laws are created to serve as guidelines. People are required to abide by them.
For eCommerce websites like those that sell Breigarens, find out what laws covering eCommerce in your area and abide by it. Your state office will surely have the information.
General Rule of Thumb
Two of the most important things are making sure that there’s a privacy policy in place and making sure there are terms and conditions.
Regardless of what the privacy policy and terms and conditions actually say you need to make that you do abide by what is said in there. Privacy policies are actually a little bit more difficult so i’ll address it first and that’s because there is no general federal law having to do with privacy rights. So, instead what you have is 50 different stated with 50 different laws having to do with their residents are entitled to in terms of privacy.
Know the Law and Abide by it
The general rule of thumb though is you find the state that has the most restrictive privacy laws and you try and abide by that one. So, it’s better to confirm your policy and your practices to a state that is more restrictive rather more lacks, particularly depending on what kind of information you’re taking on from your users.
If you have a static site that doesn’t really take on any information from a user but is more engaging them than anything else you have less to worry about, but if you are collecting data from a user then you really have to start thinking about what you have to do in order to keep not only the terms correct but your internal policies correct as well.
The same goes for terms and conditions, they apply in the same kind of way, you need to make sure that you have proper licenses between you and your users and it’s properly said what can and cannot be done on your website and you have control over what, what happens.
Valid Contract
The other important thing with a website in terms of contracting has to do with whether or not a user has created a valid contract with you. So, if they’re purchasing something through your website or the like, you need to make sure that whatever contract you have in place that they’re signing requires them to do something. It’s not sufficient and many courts have said this just to have the contract available to review online with nothing more.
That’s why often times when you buy something you have to click through, sometimes even you have to scroll through all the text before you can even click on that button. Basically what they’re doing through their software code is creating more hurdles for the user to get through before they can say that they’ve agreed to that contract. It’s only doing these clickwrap agreements that you can make sure that you have a valid contract or something more close to a valid contract or your website.
