What your websitemust show by law.
Most small business sites are missing at least one detail the law asks for. None of them is hard to add, and the same details are what careful customers look for before they trust you. Here is the list, in plain English.
Who you are, and how to reach you
The Electronic Commerce Regulations cover most business websites. They ask for these to be easy to find on the site:
- Your name, as a business or as the person behind it.
- A postal address where you are based. A PO box is not enough.
- An email address, not just a contact form.
- Your VAT number, if you are registered for VAT.
- Your registration details, if you are on a public register such as Companies House, and your professional body if you work in a regulated profession.
The footer or a contact page is the usual place, as long as it can be reached from every page.
Limited companies: three more
The rules on company names and trading details ask every company to put these on its website, as well as its full registered name:
- Where it is registered, for example “Registered in England and Wales”.
- Its company number.
- Its registered office address.
This is the one most small company sites miss. It goes on your emails, invoices and order forms too.
A privacy notice
If your site collects anything about people, even a name and email from a contact form, UK GDPR says you have to tell them what you collect, why, how long you keep it and who you share it with. That is your privacy notice. Link to it from every page, and from beside any form.
If you sell online
Selling to the public online brings the Consumer Contracts Regulations. Before someone pays, they must be given clear information about you, the price including delivery, and their right to cancel.
For goods, that right usually lasts 14 days from the day they arrive. If you never tell people about it, the law stretches it by up to twelve months. Clear delivery, returns and terms pages are the simple way to cover this.
A ten minute check
- Is your business name and postal address on the site?
- Is there an email address, not only a form?
- If you are a company: is your company number, registered office and where you are registered shown?
- If you are VAT registered: is your VAT number there?
- Is there a privacy notice, linked from every page?
- Does any tracking wait until people agree?
- If you sell: are delivery, returns and terms easy to find before checkout?
This is a plain English summary, not legal advice. If something here applies to you and you are not sure what to do, ask whoever looks after your legal paperwork.
How Mendbird helps
The free check looks at the cookies your home page sets on a first visit, and the tracking and advertising scripts it loads, and says whether they appear to run before anyone agrees. Check your site to see what yours does.
The rest of the list is worth ten minutes of your own time today. These are also the details a careful customer looks for before trusting a business they have not used before.