The pages a UK shop needs before taking money

Most new shops treat these pages as paperwork to be done later. They are read more often than owners expect, usually by somebody deciding whether to trust you, and some of them are required of a UK trader rather than optional. This is general information to help you know what to look into. It is not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for checking your own situation.

Why are these pages more than paperwork?

A stranger who is close to buying goes looking for reasons not to. The returns page and the delivery page are where they look, and a vague answer there loses the sale as effectively as a broken checkout does.

Written well, these pages do work for you. A clear returns policy removes the main reason people hesitate on a first order from an unfamiliar shop. A clear delivery page stops the cost being a surprise at checkout, which is the most common reason a full basket is abandoned.

So write them in plain words rather than copying a wall of boilerplate. A policy nobody can read reassures nobody, whatever it technically says.

What must you say about who you are?

UK buyers are entitled to know who they are dealing with. That means your trading name, a geographic address, and a way to contact you that reaches a person. A contact form on its own is thin; an email address is better.

If you trade through a limited company there are additional requirements about showing the registered company name, its number and its registered office. Check what applies to your structure rather than assuming, because the rules differ between a sole trader and a company.

Beyond the requirement, this is the single cheapest trust signal you have. A shop with no address reads as a shop that might not exist next week.

What should the delivery page say?

State the cost before the checkout, and state the timescale as a realistic range rather than a best case. Under-promising here is worth far more than the orders an optimistic estimate wins you, because a missed date produces a complaint and a refund request.

Say what happens when something goes wrong: a parcel that does not arrive, an address entered incorrectly, a delay outside your control. Buyers do not expect perfection, they expect to know what you will do.

If you ship outside the UK, be explicit about who pays any duties or import charges. A customer billed unexpectedly on delivery is a customer you have lost, and it is a common and avoidable complaint.

What should returns and cancellation cover?

UK consumers buying online generally have a right to cancel within a set period after delivery, separate from anything being faulty, and there are recognised exceptions such as personalised or perishable goods. Your own policy has to sit on top of that, and cannot quietly offer less than the law provides.

Because the detail matters and the exceptions are specific, this is the page most worth checking properly against current guidance for your products. Getting it wrong is not merely a bad look; it is the kind of mistake that produces a dispute you lose.

Separately from cancellation, goods have to match their description and be of satisfactory quality. That is a different right from changing one's mind, and your page is clearer if it treats them as two things rather than blending them.

What does a privacy notice need to say?

If you collect names, addresses, emails or order histories, you need a privacy notice explaining what you collect, why, how long you keep it, who else sees it, and how somebody asks for a copy or asks you to delete it.

Write it about your shop rather than downloading a generic one. A notice describing data practices you do not have is worse than none, because it is a written statement that does not match what you do.

The practical version of this is short: list every place customer data ends up — the shop platform, your email tool, your payment provider, your shipping labels — and describe that honestly.

Do cookies and tracking need consent?

Analytics and advertising tracking are not strictly necessary for a shop to function, and in the UK that distinction matters: non-essential tracking generally requires consent before it runs, while things like keeping a basket working do not.

In practice this means a banner that genuinely gates the non-essential tags rather than one that appears and sets everything anyway. A banner that does nothing is the worst of both, since it annoys visitors and provides no cover.

Be aware of the trade you are making. Real consent means some visitors decline, and the data you collect will undercount them. That is the expected outcome rather than a fault in your setup.

What do terms of sale cover, and where do you check them?

Terms set out when a contract is formed, what happens if you cannot fulfil an order, how pricing errors are handled, and how disputes are dealt with. For a small shop this can be short, and short and accurate beats long and copied.

Do not simply lift another shop's pages. Beyond the copyright problem, you inherit their business model: their delivery times, their exceptions, their company structure. Pages that contradict how you actually operate are worse than plain ones that match.

For anything you are unsure about, particularly cancellation rights and anything specific to your products, take proper advice or check the current official guidance. This article is a map of what to look into, not a substitute for that.

What to do next

Write the six pages in plain words and make sure each one describes what you genuinely do: who you are, delivery, returns and cancellation, privacy, cookies, and terms of sale. Then read your own returns page as a first-time buyer and ask whether it would reassure you. Where the detail is legally specific, check current guidance for your products rather than copying another shop. We write these pages as part of every store build, matched to how the shop actually operates.

Common questions