What are Terms and Conditions Agreements?
A Terms and Conditions agreement acts as a legal contract between you (the company) who has the website or mobile app, and the user who accesses your website/app.
Having a Terms and Conditions agreement is completely optional. No laws require you to have one. Not even the super-strict and wide-reaching General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
You can use this agreement anywhere, regardless of what platform your business operates on:
WordPress blogs or blogs on any kind of platform: Joomla!, Drupal, etc.
If users abuse your website or mobile app in any way, you can terminate their account. Your “Termination” clause can inform users that their accounts would be terminated if they abuse your service.
If users can post content on your website or mobile app (create content and share it on your platform), you can remove any content they created if it infringes copyright. Your Terms and Conditions will inform users that they can only create and/or share content they own rights to. Similarly, if users can register for an account and choose a username, you can inform users that they are not allowed to choose usernames that may infringe trademarks, i.e. usernames like Google, Facebook, and so on.
If you sell products or services, you could cancel specific orders if a product price is incorrect. Your Terms and Conditions can include a clause to inform users that certain orders, at your sole discretion, can be canceled if the products ordered have incorrect prices due to various errors. And many more examples.
How to Enforce Terms and Conditions Agreements
Your Terms and Conditions agreement will be uniquely yours. While some clauses are standard and commonly seen in pretty much every Terms and Conditions Agreement, it’s up to you to set the rules and guidelines that the user must agree to.
You can think of your Terms and Conditions agreement as the legal agreement where you maintain your rights to exclude users from your app in the event that they abuse your app, where you maintain your legal rights against potential app abusers, and so on.
An Intellectual Property clause will inform users that the contents, logo, and other visual media you created are your property and is protected by copyright laws.
A Termination clause will inform users that any accounts on your website and mobile app, or users’ access to your website and app, can be terminated in case of abuses or at your sole discretion.
A Governing Law clause will inform users which laws govern the agreement. These laws should come from the country in which your company is headquartered or the country from which you operate your website and mobile app.
A Links to Other Websites clause will inform users that you are not responsible for any third-party websites that you link to. This kind of clause will generally inform users that they are responsible for reading and agreeing (or disagreeing) with the Terms and Conditions or Privacy Policies of these third parties.