According to Aragon Research, "Clickwrap transactions replace electronic signatures with the act of clicking to check a box or on a button that includes acceptance language (such as “I Agree” or “Accept”)."
Clickwrap Transaction Platforms can be used for three primary use cases:
Copyright © 2020 Aragon Research Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
The above graphic shows that Digital Transaction Management tools like electronic signature providers are better suited for a more complex, lower volume set of agreements.
Copyright © 2020 Aragon Research Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
The simplest example of a clickwrap transaction is when presenting a checkbox with a link to terms and conditions as part of a purchase. The buyer will check the box to accept the terms which represents manifestation of acceptance to the agreement, legally compliant by ESIGN law.
Clickwrap Transaction Platforms automatically version, tailor the agreement(s), publish terms online, track the connectivity of the checkbox and link to the actual published page, and can also capture screenshots of the page automatically.
The world is going fully digital faster in a pandemic era than many imagined. This means that for B2B and B2C transactions, more of them will be completely digital and online. Clickwrap Transaction Platforms are positioned to assist enterprises with the challenges of managing the legal terms and conditions associated with online transactions.
Get the Report
There are many different ways to present your clickwrap agreement, all of which can influence your conversion rate and the likelihood of your agreement being upheld in court, should the need arise.
Some companies, such as banking sites or apps, embed the agreement they are asking you to sign on the page itself, forcing you to scroll through the agreement prior to accepting to ensure the signer can not dispute being presented the terms to which they agreed.
Other companies will require you to offer affirmative assent (check a box, or leave initials) at multiple points in the contract to call attention to certain clauses and affirm assent to them individually, as well as assent to the entire agreement. This is popular in leasing agreements, to call attention to special addendums or community requirements.
Still others, like most social networking sites or apps, will present multiple agreements that are accepted simultaneously through one, singular action of assent (like creating an account, or checking a box). These popular checkboxes generally have links to the agreement referenced, which hosted on another page entirely. In order to support this, companies will often leverage their own web CMS, but that can present its own issues and challenges. Common web CMS solutions are not typically conducive to legal content workflows, and that means best practices are unlikely to be followed. Management of terms specific to locales, different environments within your company, and even versioning of terms can prove to be difficult tasks if you are using a common web CMS for your legal content.
Our team has read every case and established best practices by working with companies like Wayfair, DoorDash, Upwork, Extra Space Storage, and more. We'd love to help walk you through how you can present and manage clickwrap agreements that are legally binding and best for your customer experience.
