Legal and compliance
What is Terms of service?
The contract governing use of a website: who runs it, what it offers, what visitors may and may not do, who owns the content, what is not warranted, and which law applies. It governs using the site, which is a different question from buying from it.
Also called: terms of use · website terms
Terms of service versus terms of business
- Terms of service
- Governs visiting and using the website — acceptable use, intellectual property, disclaimers.
- Terms of business
- Governs buying from you — scope, payment schedule, revisions, delivery, ownership on final payment.
- Both, if you sell
- Conflating them is the usual mistake, and it leaves the commercial relationship undefined.
The limits on what terms can do
Consumer protection law in the UK, EU, Canada and Australia overrides contrary contract terms. You cannot exclude liability for death, personal injury or fraud. A clause reading "no refunds under any circumstances" is void where a statutory right exists, and including it weakens the credibility of the whole document.
What makes them enforceable
Being identifiable, being findable before the transaction, and being dated. Anonymous terms buried three clicks deep and never updated are difficult to rely on. Link them from the footer of every page and keep them indexable — hiding them behind a noindex helps nobody.
Where this is covered in depth
A definition can only go so far. Who actually owns your website — a checklist you can verify today covers this properly — 3 minutes, free, no email required.
Who wrote this
Anas Bin Masud builds e-commerce sites and does technical SEO for businesses in the UK, Canada and Pakistan. These definitions come from client work rather than from a content brief — where an entry describes a mistake, it is usually one found on a real site. More about how I work.