Online Shop Terms and Conditions UK: Consumer Template (Word, PDF)

In legal terms, these are standard consumer terms for distance contracts: buyer and seller never meet, the contract is formed through a website, and the consumer has protections that cannot be signed away. They differ from website terms of use, which govern browsing and content on the site, and from a privacy notice, which explains how personal data is handled under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. Only the terms of sale decide when money changes hands and what the buyer can claim afterwards.

Good terms do two jobs. They give the pre-contract information the law requires, and they record the commercial choices the business has made: acceptance on dispatch or immediately, free returns or not, which payment methods, which delivery areas. A copied competitor page inherits choices that do not match your operations. The UK business templates cover the other documents a new shop usually needs alongside its terms of sale.

Four instruments sit underneath every UK online shop. The starting point is the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, which list the information due before the order (Schedule 2), require a final button labelled with words such as "Place order and pay" (regulation 14), and set out the cancellation regime in regulations 27 to 38. A consumer can cancel within 14 days of receiving the goods; if the trader never explains that right, the period runs for up to 12 months longer (regulation 31). Schedule 3 contains official model cancellation instructions and a model form, and a trader who supplies the instructions correctly filled in is treated as having given the cancellation information. The full text of the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 is worth keeping open while you check your checkout.

Underneath the checkout rules sits the Consumer Rights Act 2015. Goods must be of satisfactory quality, fit for purpose and as described (sections 9 to 11), and the consumer has a 30-day short-term right to reject, then repair or replacement, then a price reduction or final right to reject (sections 20 to 24). Delivery is due within 30 days unless another time is agreed (section 28), and the goods stay at the seller's risk until the customer has them (section 29). Part 2 makes unfair terms unenforceable, and regulation 6A of the Consumer Rights (Payment Surcharges) Regulations 2012 bans surcharges on consumer card payments.

Since 6 April 2025, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 has policed how the shop sells, banning fake and concealed incentivised reviews (Schedule 20) and treating compulsory fees added late in checkout, known as drip pricing, as a misleading omission (sections 227 and 230). Its alternative dispute resolution chapter took effect on 6 April 2026 and revoked the 2015 ADR Regulations. The subscription contract rules in Part 4, Chapter 2 of the same Act are a separate regime, and this template does not cover subscriptions at all. The Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002 still require each order to be acknowledged without undue delay and by electronic means.

The obvious moment is launch. A new Shopify or WooCommerce store needs terms linked from the checkout before the first sale, because the information has to be available before the customer is bound. Founders who have just finished registering as a sole trader with HMRC often reach this point with a theme's placeholder text still in the footer.

A change of structure is the second trigger. When two makers who sold under one name sign a written partnership agreement, or a sole trader incorporates and adopts articles of association for a new limited company, the seller named in the terms changes. A company must show its registered name, number and registered office on its website. Old terms that still name the founder personally cause real confusion when a customer later sues.

Products change too. Engraved gifts, fresh food, sealed cosmetics and downloads each carry their own cancellation exception or consent rule. One edge case: a shop that adds an instalment service at checkout needs terms that keep the customer's rights against the seller intact, while the credit itself sits with the provider.

The opening clauses identify the seller, with variants for a company, an LLP, a sole trader and a partnership, and give a postal address, email and basic-rate telephone number. The ordering clause describes the technical steps, how input errors are corrected, the exact wording of your order button and the moment the contract is formed. You choose between acceptance on dispatch, which leaves room to correct a pricing error or refuse an order you cannot fulfil, and acceptance with the automatic confirmation email. With acceptance on dispatch, the customer can withdraw the order before you accept it, and an order not accepted within 30 days lapses with a full refund. If a freelancer builds your checkout under a contractor agreement for freelance designers or developers, give them this clause so the button and the order flow match it.

Money and delivery come next: prices including VAT (or a statement that you are not VAT registered), no fee for any payment method, nothing added after the order summary, then one short paragraph per payment method you tick. Delivery covers areas, timescale, late delivery remedies and failed attempts.

The consumer rights clauses carry most of the legal weight. Cancellation refers to an annex reproducing the Schedule 3 model instructions, completed with your details, how your parcels arrive, who pays for returns and your returns address, followed by the model form. Exceptions such as personalised goods, perishables, sealed hygiene goods once unsealed or wine sold en primeur appear only if ticked. A faulty goods clause summarises the 30-day, six-month and six-year rights, and optional clauses cover your own guarantee, an ADR provider, reviews, age-restricted products and a code of conduct. Liability, events outside your control, governing law and the courts close the document.

You start with the name of your shop, its web address and whether you sell downloads as well as physical goods. That answer decides whether the digital content rules appear: the consent wording, the cancellation period counted from the contract and the separate remedies. Next you say who runs the shop, and the form asks only for what that structure requires, such as the registered number for a company or each partner's name for a partnership.

The questionnaire then follows your checkout. You pick when the contract is formed and the wording on your final button, describe delivery areas and timescale, tick payment methods, decide who pays for returns and where goods go back, then tick any exceptions that apply to your range. At the end you publish the terms on a page linked from the checkout and attach them, with the cancellation form, to the confirmation email. The Word and PDF files arrive as soon as you finish.

The most expensive mistake is a cancellation period that starts on the order date. For goods it runs from delivery of the last item, so a shop that refuses a return on day 15 after ordering, but day 10 after delivery, is in the wrong. Charging return postage without saying so is next: if the terms do not tell the customer they pay for returns, the seller pays. A "no refunds on sale items" notice is unenforceable against consumers and misleads them.

Fees are the next trap. A "service charge" or packaging fee that appears only on the final page is likely to breach the drip pricing rule, however small the fee, and surcharging consumer card payments is banned outright. Many sellers also forget the confirmation email: regulation 16 requires a confirmation of the contract on a durable medium, repeating the pre-contract information, no later than delivery. Sending the terms and the cancellation form with it, as this template does, is the simplest way to prove you supplied them. Finally, hiding negative reviews or failing to label reviews written in exchange for a discount is banned in every circumstance, and the terms should describe the review process you actually run.