Terms of service for an online shop: what yours must cover, and what they can't take away

The legal pages an online shop actually needs

Plenty of shops have more legal pages than they've read. Most need four, each with its own job.

• Terms and conditions of sale: the contract when somebody buys
• A privacy policy: what you collect, why, and who you share it with
• A returns and refunds policy, written for your products
• Delivery information: where you ship, how long it takes and what it costs

Shopify will generate a terms of service template under Settings, then Policies. Treat it as a first draft. It doesn't know your returns process, your subscriptions or your loyalty scheme, and Shopify's own help pages remind you that you're responsible for following whatever you publish.

What your terms can't take away from a UK shopper

Let's be blunt: no clause beats consumer law. Goods have to be as described, fit for purpose and of satisfactory quality. Most online orders can be cancelled within fourteen days of delivery, whatever your terms say.

So a 'no refunds on sale items' line doesn't stop somebody returning a faulty one, and a term that's unfair to the customer isn't binding on them. None of this is legal advice. Get a solicitor to read your terms before you scale, sell abroad or launch subscriptions.

The terms your emails quietly depend on

Every 'terms apply' line at the bottom of an email points at a page. That page has to exist, and it has to say what the email implied. If you run subscriptions or loyalty, those terms deserve the most care.

• Discount codes: who can use them, how often, what's excluded and when they expire
• Loyalty points: how they're earned, when they expire and what they're worth
• Subscriptions: how renewal works, how to skip or cancel, and when you'll remind them
• Competitions: who can enter, how winners are picked, and that entering isn't signing up

And keep marketing consent out of your terms altogether. It has to be its own clear choice, never a line buried in conditions somebody accepted to check out. The ICO's direct marketing guidance is the place to check the current position.