85% of Retail Store Websites Have No Terms of Service Page

A customer orders a sofa through a local furniture store's website, pays a deposit and waits. When the delivery date slips twice, she goes back to the site to check the store's policy on cancellations and refunds. There is none. The store's rules exist only in the heads of its staff, and the dispute goes to her card company.

Terms of service, sometimes called terms and conditions, set the rules for a sale: payment, delivery, returns, warranties and what happens when something goes wrong. For a store that takes orders, deposits or special requests online, they are the page a customer, a card processor or a payment platform looks for when a purchase is disputed. A clear page protects the store as much as the customer.

85.1% of retail store websites have no link to a terms of service page. Privacy policies are nearly as rare, missing on 77%, and 74.3% of store websites have neither legal page. Furniture stores, where orders are large and deliveries are scheduled weeks out, are the least likely to publish terms, at 93.8%.

In September 2026 we checked the websites of US retail stores listed on Google Business Profiles in eight store categories: furniture, fashion, jewelry, beauty, electronics, home goods, mattress and fitness equipment stores. The main figures come from 74 store websites where we followed every link from page to page and so saw every page on the site. We also checked a wider group of 444 store websites, including larger ones, for any terms page among the pages we reached.

A site counts as having a terms of service page when it links to a page on its own site titled or addressed as terms, terms of service or terms and conditions. It has a privacy policy link when it links to a privacy policy page on its own site. Store-type figures cover the four categories with at least 10 fully checked websites.

63 of the 74 store websites checked page by page have no terms page, and 14.9% have one, about one store in seven. The wider group tells the same story: across 444 retail store websites, 90.1% show no terms page, nine in ten.

These are businesses that sell physical goods, often expensive ones, and some of their websites take orders, deposits, special requests or gift card sales. Every one of those is a transaction that can be disputed, and a terms page is where the store sets out, in advance, how that dispute will be settled.

Privacy policies are nearly as rare. 77% of store websites have no privacy policy link, and 74.3% have neither a terms page nor a privacy policy, about three stores in four with no legal pages at all.

The two pages travel together: stores that publish terms usually publish a privacy policy too, which leaves most of the market with neither. For a customer comparing two stores, a footer with clear policy links is one of the quickest signs of which one is set up to sell online.

Among store types with at least 10 fully checked websites, furniture stores are the least likely to link to terms, with 93.8% of furniture store websites showing none, followed by jewelry stores at 90.9% and home goods stores at 81.8%. Electronics stores do best at 75%, which still leaves three in four without a terms page.

Furniture and jewelry are high-value purchases with custom orders, deposits, long delivery times and warranty questions, the situations where written terms matter most. Electronics stores, where warranties and returns are part of every sale, are the most likely to publish them. Across every store type, most websites have no terms page.

If you sell online, or even take deposits, special orders or gift card payments through your website, publish terms that cover payment, delivery, returns, warranties and disputes. Link them in the footer of every page and at checkout. Most store platforms include policy templates in their settings; have a lawyer review the final version.

If your website is a catalog for an in-store business, a short store policies page still helps. Cover returns, exchanges, price changes and holds, and answer the questions customers ask before they drive over. Add a privacy policy at the same time, since 74.3% of store websites are missing both.

Policy pages are easiest to get right when the site is built. Choosing small business web design that includes terms, privacy and returns pages from launch gives a store's customers the answers before they need to ask.

Need help with this? See our web design services.

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