E-commerce: Practical Guide to Proper Communication with the Consumer

In recent years, consumers have increasingly turned to electronic transactions to meet their needs for goods and services, while more and more businesses are maintaining online stores or collaborating with e-commerce platforms that mediate online sales.

However, the lack of physical access to the store and the trader changes the way of communication, makes it difficult to understand the terms of the transaction and creates the need for businesses to be more specifically informed about their compliance with consumer information.

The SEV Guide was based on the initiative of BusinessEurope and other European business organisations Recommendations for a better presentation of information to consumers, and is a useful voluntary tool for businesses. It contains ten recommendations as follows:

1. Compulsory and complete information: We ensure that the e-shop displays all the information required by law that consumers need to know, such as business details, ways of communication, the characteristics of the products sold, their total price, any costs they may incur, payment details, as well as the time and terms of delivery.
2. Simple and understandable language: We always use clear and simple formulations and avoid complicated sentences and incomprehensible terms. We even seek legal or technical concepts to be explained in a comprehensible way, without losing their accuracy.
3. Information visibility & Graded approach: We take care of the direct visibility of the relevant information at each stage of the order. Some basic information, such as your contact details, must be permanently visible to the consumer at each stage.
4. Visible and creative presentation: We choose visual ways of presenting information that help to better understand it. For example, with tables and hyperlinks to provide more detailed information and "visual effects" to attract consumer attention in important terms, such as deadlines or exceptions.
5. Easy access: We adapt the electronic environment appropriately so that the consumer always has easy and direct access to the information he needs from every device he can use.
6. Direct and easy-to-understand purchase confirmation: We always confirm with written information to the consumer the completion of his order. Such information shall be given within a reasonable time and in an intelligible form.
7. Clear consumer rights: We provide full information about the consumer's right of withdrawal from the online marketplace and the procedure for exercising it. We inform the consumer in case of changes in the contractual terms and the consequences in case of rejection of the proposed changes on his part.
8. Simple and concise contract conditions: If we provide General Contract Terms, we make sure that they are simple and concise, that the consumer has direct access to them before the completion of his order and that they are in Greek for the contracts drawn up in Greece.
9. Dispute resolution possibilities: We inform the consumer about the possibility of having recourse to out-of-court dispute resolution mechanisms (provided that we are subject to them), as well as to the European Online Dispute Resolution platform.
10. Voluntary Codes of Conduct: We inform you of any commitment to voluntary rules of professional ethics and ethical conduct, such as Codes of Conduct for e-commerce that we may have adopted.

Read in detail here the SEV Guide.

Source: BSE