Legal Best Practices for your Squarespace Website
While it’s up to you how ‘by the book’ you want to be about legal pages on your website, for peace of mind, here’s a simple guide and discount link to my favourite resource for generating legal policies that are custom to your business and location.
(1) Website Policy Pages
There are some basic legal policies I recommend putting in place on you website for peace of mind, including:
Terms of Service: This lets your visitors know what to expect when they visit or make purchases from your site, and how to interact with your site content.
A Privacy Policy: If you collect people’s information through a contact form, a newsletter sign-up form, or online payments, your privacy policy clarifies how you use your visitors' information.
A Cookie Policy: Squarespace websites use cookies, which are pieces of data stored on a device to improve a visitors’ browsing experience (you can read more about this in the next ‘Cookies’ note).
A Disclaimer: This is an optional policy to help protect in legal disputes.
You can add these as unlinked pages on your website, and link to them via your footer. If you sell physical products, Squarespace will prompt you to add certain policies to your checkout page.
Why I love Termageddon
My favourite resource for generating policies is Termageddon (you can get 10% off your first payment with code ZEONI). For $12/month or $119/year, you can have as many policies as you need for your website. All you do is answer some questions and the policies are customised to your particular business and location.
For each policy, you’ll get some copy-and-paste code to put into the respective page on your website (use the ‘embed’ block), and the policies automatically (!) update as the laws change. If your industry has specific legal guidelines, you can customise the relevant sections of your policies.
If you’re looking for free policy resources to tide you over, there are templates online, and Squarespace offers some sample messages for your Privacy Policy.
I am obviously not a legal expert =) and cannot offer specific advice beyond this. Both Squarespace & Termageddon have great guides.
(2) Website Cookies
Cookies are small pieces of data that websites store on a device. They can improve your visitors’ browsing experience because they help websites remember preferences and understand how people use different features.
As long as you have website visitors from the EU, you technically need a cookie banner to get affirmative consent for your visitors since Squarespace sites use cookies.
There are 2 types of cookies: (1) ‘essential’ cookies that are required for a website to function properly; and (2) ‘non-essential’ analytics and performance cookies. You can choose to disable non-essential cookies on Squarespace, or until someone consents via your cookie banner. Here are some helpful Squarespace guides:
I hope that was helpful! And if your feeling overwhelmed by your website to-dos, no that you don’t have to do everything at once. Take a moment to tune in to what feels most important to you, and take the time you need to roll things out.
Hey there!
I’m Christina Paul, a therapist turned Brand Therapist, here to help women share their medicine with the world through branding, websites, and visibility.
I work mainly with coaches, therapists, creatives and change-makers - women who are part of the gentle revolution our world so desperately needs.
If you’re feeling a connection, feel free to explore my offerings, find me on Instagram or subscribe to my e-community for love letters sent straight to your inbox.
