Tips for writing and clearly displaying your site’s terms.

To help manage the relationship between your website and its visitors, consider establishing legal policies or terms for your website or online business. Certain regulations may require you to display specific legal information on your website, such as:

• A cookie policy
• A privacy policy
• Terms of service

This guide includes tips for writing and displaying your terms in a clear, and accessible way.

Note: This guide is a resource, but it’s not legal advice. Squarespace doesn’t give advice on laws applicable to your site or business, as stated in our Terms of Service.

Write your terms of service

Cookie policy

Your site stores small files called cookies on a visitor’s device to help the site run effectively and remember preferences. If you have visitors from the EU or UK, having a dedicated cookie policy on your site is often a legal requirement. 

Your policy should include:

• A full list of every cookie your site uses - Group your cookies by their purpose, such as necessary, functional, analytics, or marketing. 
• Consent management - Provide instructions on how visitors can change or withdraw their consent on your site at any time. 
• Cross-border data transfers - State if you send or store personal data in countries outside the European Economic Area. 
• Specific details for each cookie - Explain why you use each cookie, how long it stays on a device, and the legal reason you’re allowed to use it (such as getting explicit consent from the visitor). 
• Third-party disclosures - List any other companies (such as Google or Meta) that receive data through your cookies and link to their privacy policies. 
• Visitor rights - Explain the rights visitors have under the GDPR, such as the right to access, correct, or delete their personal data. 
• Your identity and contact information - Include a link to your imprint page that includes your full name and contact details as the site owner.

Privacy policy

A privacy policy provides clarity regarding your use of visitors' information. Consider posting your website's or business' privacy policy to a page on your site to document:

• What information you collect
• Why you collect that information
• How you collect that information
• What you do with that information (To learn more about what Squarespace does with visitor data, see section 12 of our Privacy Policy)
• How you share that information
• How long you'll store that information
• How your site uses cookies (For example, in your terms, you can include this list of cookies your site uses)

Here are some sample messages for your Privacy Policy.

If you're using Acuity Scheduling, you can use a Scheduling intake form to add a privacy policy to your scheduler. To learn more, visit Client intake forms and agreements in Scheduling.

Website terms

Your website terms should let your visitors know what to expect when they visit or make purchases from your site, and how to interact with content on your site. You should let visitors know:

• Who you are and how to contact you
• That by using your site, your website terms apply to their use
• What terms apply to their use of the site and your services
• Your sales, delivery, and return policies
• Which payment methods are accepted
• The rules for making public comments on your site, including that copyright infringement in comments is not allowed
• That they can’t share links to protected Member Site assets, like images and videos
• How to report copyright infringement
• That your content is protected by copyright laws
• That your content can’t be used for commercial purposes by others
• What country’s laws will govern the terms

Display terms on your site

Checkout (stores only)

If you use Squarespace Commerce, you can add return policies, terms of service, and privacy policies to your checkout page. Once added, your checkout page will have links that open these policies in a pop-up window.

Cookie banner

Certain laws may require you to inform visitors of, and obtain their consent to, the use of cookies. You can do this by adding a cookie banner to your site.

Footer

In your footer, add text or links to Not Linked pages that contain your policies, along with a link to your imprint page. This makes key information accessible from nearly any page. You can also add text to the site footer. To learn more, visit Editing footers.

Navigation

Adding navigation links is another way of making your policies more accessible without taking away from the main focus of your site. You can add your policies to a single page, or as multiple pages grouped into a dropdown. In version 7.0, some templates offer secondary navigation areas.

Newsletter block disclaimer

If you collect email addresses in a newsletter block, you can add information about how you use this data to the Disclaimer field. This text displays below the email field in the form. It says “We respect your privacy” as a starting point, but you can change it.

Announce changes to your terms

You can notify visitors about recent policy changes with an announcement bar or promotional pop-up. These methods are highly visible and ensure that visitors are aware of important information.