Legal and Trust Pages for an Indian Online Store: What the Website Must Display in 2026

Legal and Trust Pages for an Indian Online Store: What the Website Must Display in 2026

An Indian online store should display, in places a shopper can find without hunting, who the business is (legal name, registered address, working contact details), how to complain (a named grievance officer with contact details), what happens after a sale (returns, refunds, exchanges and warranty terms), how personal data is handled (a privacy policy and a consent notice), and the terms the customer agrees to at checkout. The Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020 are the main reason several of these are not optional, and Shopify and WooCommerce both give you the tools to publish them in an afternoon. The harder part is making them accurate, consistent, linked from the footer and checkout, and true to how you actually run the business.

This article is a build and display guide for store owners and the developers they hire. It is not legal advice: the Rules, their amendments and how a regulator reads them can change, so have a qualified lawyer approve your final wording. It does not cover tax registration, tax filing, tax rates, refunds of tax, shipping, logistics or payment fees. Where a tax registration number appears below, the only question is where on the website it may be shown, never whether or how you should register. The sources are listed at the end and were read in October 2026. I could not open the official Gazette or India Code text of the Rules while preparing this, so the Rules are described from published legal summaries, and every rule-level detail carries a note to confirm against the official text.

Why trust and legal pages are part of the build, not an afterthought

A first-time buyer has no brand memory to lean on. They look for a real address, a phone number that rings, a returns page that sounds human and a sign that somebody is accountable. I have no sourced conversion figure to quote (TODO: confirm if you want a benchmark).

There is also a practical gating effect. Payment providers ask for website details before they switch you to live mode, marketplaces and ad platforms review landing pages, and the Rules put display duties on e-commerce entities. So the same set of pages answers a customer's doubt, a reviewer's checklist and a regulatory duty at once. That is why we treat them as part of the build scope, planned in the first week rather than pasted in the night before launch.

Two related Govindani guides cover neighbouring ground. For consent notices, cookies and data handling, see DPDP Act website compliance for Indian businesses. For the checkout-side duties added by the 2026 amendment, see what India's 2026 Consumer Protection E-Commerce Rules require from your checkout. This article is the broader inventory: every page and every detail, and where it goes.

What the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020 ask you to display

The Rules distinguish between kinds of e-commerce entity. A marketplace e-commerce entity provides a platform on which third-party sellers list goods. An inventory e-commerce entity owns the inventory and sells directly to consumers, which includes single-brand retailers. Most small Indian D2C stores on Shopify or WooCommerce selling their own products fall in the second group, though if you also run a multi-vendor marketplace, the first group applies to you as well. Which category you are in is a question for your lawyer, not for a blog post (TODO: confirm with counsel).

According to the published summaries I read (the indialaw.in guide, and the law-firm summaries returned by search, which are secondary sources), the display and disclosure duties cluster like this.

For every e-commerce entity

• The legal name of the company.
• The principal address of its headquarters and branches.
• Website name and details, plus customer-care contact details.
• A grievance officer: name, designation and contact details displayed on the website. The summaries state the officer must acknowledge a complaint within 48 hours and resolve it within one month of receipt.
• The importer's name, where goods are imported.

For inventory entities (and marketplaces for their sellers' listings)

• Information on returns, refunds, exchanges and warranties.
• The total price with a breakdown of charges.
• Payment methods, including security information, any charges and how to cancel a payment.
• How a consumer can raise and resolve a grievance.

For goods listed by sellers

• Country of origin of the goods.
• Expiry date where relevant.
• Authenticity and, for imported goods, guarantee information.
• Where applicable, seller identifiers such as a tax registration number and PAN, which one summary says sellers must give the marketplace.

I am not going to restate the rule numbers, because the summaries disagree on numbering and I could not read the official text (TODO: confirm rule numbers against the Gazette notification and the 2026 amendment). What matters for a developer is the list of items above: each one is a field or a page on your site.

The 2026 amendment, covered in our checkout guide, adds pricing, grievance-timeline and dark-pattern items, so read both together.

A mapping from duty to page

The page set every store needs

Here is the set we plan for a standard Indian store, with what each page must contain. None of this replaces your lawyer; it is the structure the lawyer reviews.

1. About and Contact

An About page earns trust if it names the business and the people. Include the legal entity name exactly as registered, the year you started if you want to state it, and what you sell. Avoid vague claims you cannot back up, such as "India's number one". The Contact page needs the registered address, a customer-care phone number and email, working hours, and the realistic reply time. A contact form alone is not enough; the Rules summaries list a postal address and contact details as display items.

2. Terms and Conditions

This is the contract. A good page covers who may buy, how orders are accepted and cancelled, what you promise about descriptions and images, liability limits, governing law and court location, and how you notify changes. Keep it readable; boilerplate mentioning services you do not offer reads as careless.

3. Privacy Policy

State what personal data you collect (name, phone, email, address, order history, device data), why, who receives it (your payment provider, your couriers' systems, your email tool), how long you keep it, and how a customer asks for access or deletion. The DPDP Act and its 2025 Rules shape this page and the consent notice; do not write it from a template without checking, and see our DPDP website compliance guide for the build side. Make sure it matches what your tags and plugins really do; a policy that omits an analytics pixel you run is worse than a short honest one.

4. Returns, Refund and Exchange Policy

The Rules summaries list returns, refunds, exchanges and warranty information as required display. Write it so a customer can answer five questions in under a minute: Can I return this? Within how many days, counted from when? What condition must it be in? Who arranges the return, and how? When and how do I get my money back? Be specific, and make the policy match your real process, because the platform tells you plainly that following it is on you. Shopify's help page says that although Shopify can generate templates, "you're responsible for following your published policies."

For the workflow behind the page, the request form and refund statuses, read building a returns page and return-request flow. This article covers only the policy display.

5. Grievance Redressal page

Create a short page titled "Grievance Redressal" or "Contact our Grievance Officer". It should show the officer's name, designation, email, phone number, the postal address, the acknowledgment time you commit to and the resolution time. Based on the summaries, the Rules state 48 hours to acknowledge and one month to resolve. Do not promise anything longer than the Rules allow (TODO: confirm exact timelines against the current official text and the 2026 amendment). Put the same details in your footer, or at least a link labelled in plain words. Then make sure the mailbox is actually monitored, with a named backup when the officer is on leave.

6. Product-level disclosures

Add fields to your product template for country of origin, expiry or best-before date where relevant, importer name and address for imported goods, and warranty terms. In Shopify this is usually a metafield rendered by the theme; in WooCommerce it is a custom field, an attribute or a block. Making them structured fields rather than free text inside the description means they cannot be forgotten and can be audited by a quick export.

Business identity in the footer and at checkout

The footer is the first place a careful customer looks. A strong footer for an Indian store shows:

• The legal entity name and "Registered office" address, in text, not an image.
• A phone number and email that match the Contact page character for character.
• Links to Terms, Privacy, Returns and Refunds, Grievance Redressal, Contact and About.
• A copyright line with the correct year, set by code so it does not go stale.
• Your registration identifiers, if you hold them and your advisers agree they should appear. This is where the tax-number question fits.

Where a tax registration number is shown, as a display matter only

If your business holds a tax registration number, the sensible display locations are the footer or Legal notice page, the invoice template, and the seller details a marketplace asks you to supply. The summaries I read say sellers give registration identifiers to a marketplace "if applicable", so the display duty depends on your facts. Whether you must be registered, how you register, and what an invoice must otherwise contain are accountant and lawyer questions and are outside this article. As a builder, ask your adviser three things and then implement the answers: should the number appear on the site at all, what exact format and label, and which document templates (order email, PDF invoice) must carry it. Store the number in one settings field, not typed into ten templates, so a change takes minutes.

Checkout

Checkout is where doubt peaks. Keep the following visible without extra clicks.

• A link to Terms and to Privacy near the final button. Shopify links your policies in the checkout footer automatically once they exist, according to its help page. WooCommerce shows a terms link or statement at checkout once you assign the page.
• Customer-care contact details, ideally in the checkout footer or header.
• A clear price summary where each line is labelled. Do not add charges or pre-ticked extras on the last step; see the dark-patterns discussion in our checkout rules guide.
• The accepted payment methods shown before the customer reaches the payment step.

A bespoke checkout flow needs the same items and careful testing; our checkout system service works on exactly this part of a store.

Building the pages in Shopify

Shopify keeps standard legal policies in one place and links them for you in checkout.

1. Generate the starting text. In the Shopify admin go to Settings, then Policies. Open a policy and choose Insert template to generate default text, or type your own. Shopify's help page lists these policy types: return (refund), privacy, terms of service, shipping, legal notice and subscription. It notes templates can be generated only in English for English checkouts. Treat the generated text as a draft that your lawyer edits, not a finished policy.
2. Review and save. Edit every sentence so it matches how you operate, then click Save.
3. Know where policies appear. According to the help page, policies are linked in the checkout footer automatically, the return policy appears on the order review page, and each policy has a URL under /policies/, for example /policies/refund-policy.
4. Add them to the storefront footer. Policies are linked in checkout by default, but customers may want to read them before they get there. Shopify's help material suggests adding them to your navigation. Go to Online Store, then Navigation, open the footer menu, choose Add menu item, set the link type to Policies (or Pages for a custom page) and save the menu. Some themes control footer links in the theme editor rather than the menu, so check your theme's footer section if the links do not appear.
5. Create custom pages. About, Contact, Grievance Redressal and any Legal notice page are ordinary pages under Online Store, then Pages. Link them in the footer menu.
6. Product disclosures. Add metafields for country of origin, expiry, importer and warranty, and render them in the product template through the theme editor or a small theme change. A developer can make them required for new products so nothing is published without them.
7. Footer identity block. Add legal name, address and phone in the footer section of the theme editor as text blocks, not as an image.

Shopify's help page is clear that its templates are a convenience: you remain responsible for the content and for following it.

Building the pages in WooCommerce

WooCommerce gives you more freedom and expects you to wire it up.

1. Pages it creates. WooCommerce's documentation says it automatically creates Shop, Cart, Checkout and My Account pages, plus a Refund and Returns Policy page that is an unpublished draft with sample text. The guide describes that policy page as "not required but strongly recommended". Edit the draft with your real terms and publish it.
2. Create the other pages yourself. In WordPress, add About, Contact, Terms and Conditions, Privacy Policy and Grievance Redressal pages under Pages, then Add New. WordPress also has its own privacy policy page setting under Settings, then Privacy, which many themes and plugins read (TODO: confirm current path in WordPress documentation, as I did not read it for this article).
3. Assign the Terms page. Under WooCommerce, then Settings, then Advanced, choose your page in the Terms and Conditions dropdown and save. The WooCommerce documentation says a link to your terms then appears at checkout. With the classic checkout the terms can appear inline with a required checkbox; with the block checkout the shopper sees a message that proceeding means agreeing to the terms and privacy policy.
4. Privacy and terms wording at checkout. WooCommerce's checkout documentation describes setting the privacy policy and terms pages from dropdowns and adding privacy text at the end of checkout, in the Customizer. The path and options differ by theme and WooCommerce version, so check your admin (TODO: confirm exact current path on your installed version).
5. Footer. Use your theme's footer builder or a block theme's site editor to add the legal name, address, phone and menu links.
6. Product disclosures. Use product attributes, custom fields or a small plugin to add country of origin, expiry, importer and warranty. Show them in the product tabs or under the price.
7. Consent logging. The default is one checkbox linked to one page. If counsel wants a record of acceptance, a plugin or small custom hook can store the time and wording version; test any plugin on staging first.

Whichever platform you use, keep a single source of truth for the business details. A settings page, a theme setting or a shortcode that prints the legal name and address everywhere stops the footer and the invoice disagreeing six months later.

Writing the pages so they hold up

• Use plain language. A policy the customer cannot understand is not a trust signal.
• Version and date every policy. Show "Last updated" and keep older versions in a changelog folder.
• Keep policy and practice identical. If the page says seven days and support says five, the page wins in the customer's mind.
• Check mobile. Test the footer, the policy pages and the checkout links on a small phone screen and a slow connection.
• Make pages crawlable. Policy and contact pages should be normal indexable pages with sensible titles; our SEO service work starts by checking that they are linked, load fast and are not blocked. Do not hide legal text behind scripts that search engines and screen readers cannot read.

Launch checklist

• Legal entity name, registered address, phone and email identical in footer, Contact, About, order emails and checkout.
• Terms and Conditions published, dated and linked in footer and at checkout.
• Privacy Policy published and matched to the tags, plugins and forms actually running; consent notice and cookie banner tested.
• Returns, Refund and Exchange policy published, plain-worded, consistent with the real process and linked from product pages.
• Grievance Redressal page with officer name, designation, contact details and committed response times, and a monitored mailbox.
• Product template includes fields for country of origin, expiry where relevant, importer details where relevant and warranty.
• Tax registration number shown only in the places your adviser approved, stored in one settings field.
• Payment methods visible before the payment step; price breakup clear on cart and checkout.
• Lawyer has reviewed the final text of every policy.
• Footer and policy links tested on mobile, desktop and a screen reader.
• A named owner and a calendar reminder to review all pages at least once a year and after any law change.

Working with Govindani Infotech

Govindani Infotech Pvt. Ltd. is a Pune web design and development company that builds e-commerce stores and NGO donation sites. If you are launching a store, or your current footer, policy pages and checkout were pasted together in a hurry, we can audit what is live, list what is missing against the checklist above and build the pages, product fields and footer blocks into Shopify or WooCommerce. Our e-commerce development service covers store builds on both platforms, and our website creation service covers the About, Contact and content pages around them. If you want grievance and order queries to reach a monitored WhatsApp inbox as well, see our WhatsApp CRM option.

You can reach us on WhatsApp or through the contact page. We are at 2nd Floor, Landmark Plaza, 206 Satara Road, Parvati Paytha, Pune 411009. Tell us your platform and what is live today, and we will say honestly what needs fixing. We do not write the legal text for you: that stays with your lawyer.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which legal pages does an Indian online store need on its website?

At minimum: About, Contact, Terms and Conditions, Privacy Policy, a Returns, Refund and Exchange policy and a Grievance Redressal page naming the grievance officer. Product pages should also carry fields such as country of origin. Have a lawyer confirm the final list for your business type.

What does the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules 2020 require a store to display?

Published summaries list the legal name, headquarters and branch addresses, website and customer-care details, a grievance officer with contact details, information on returns, refunds, exchanges and warranties, price breakup, payment method information and, for imports, importer details. Confirm exact obligations against the official text and the 2026 amendment.

Where should a tax registration number appear on the website?

Only where your accountant or lawyer says it should, typically the footer or a Legal notice page and the invoice template, stored in a single settings field. This article covers display only, not whether you need to register or how.

Can I just use Shopify's generated policies or WooCommerce's sample text?

They are a good starting draft, not a finished policy. Shopify states you are responsible for following your published policies, and WooCommerce's returns page is a draft with sample text. Edit them to match your real process and have them reviewed.

How do I add these pages to the footer in Shopify and WooCommerce?

In Shopify, add the policies and custom pages as items on the footer menu under Online Store, then Navigation. In WooCommerce, publish the pages, assign Terms under WooCommerce, then Settings, then Advanced, and add links through your theme's footer or menu settings.

Sources:

• indialaw.in, A summary of the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020 (secondary summary): https://www.indialaw.in/blog/civil/consumer-protection-e-commerce-rules/
• Mondaq, The Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules 2020 (secondary law-firm summary, via search result): https://mondaq.com/india/dodd-frank-consumer-protection-act/985606/the-consumer-protection-e-commerce-rules-2020
• Shopify Help Center, Adding store policies: https://help.shopify.com/manual/checkout-settings/refund-privacy-tos
• Shopify Help Center, Display your store policies and other legal information (footer link guidance, via search result): https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/intro-to-shopify/initial-setup/sell-in-japan/japan-legal-policies
• WooCommerce, WooCommerce pages: https://woocommerce.com/document/woocommerce-pages/
• WooCommerce, Advanced settings (via search result): https://woocommerce.com/document/configuring-woocommerce-settings/advanced
• WooCommerce, Customizer checkout options (via search result): https://woocommerce.com/document/woocommerce-customizer/checkout/