The mandatory company details your business website must show
Setting up a website for your business often feels like a creative task, until you realise it needs to meet legal requirements too.
Among those are your business details, i.e. the information that identifies your company and makes it easy for customers to find and reach you.
This is not a complicated task, but it’s easy to overlook when you're focused on getting your site live and making it engaging.
Read further to find out what Dutch law requires, based on the official guidance from Ondernemersplein and the Autoriteit Consument & Markt (ACM).
The company details every Dutch business website must include
Regardless of your company’s legal form, your website needs to show:
Your company name
The company name is the trading name (handelsnaam) under which your company is registered with the KvK.
Your company address
The company address is theaddress where your business is registered with the KvK.
This information can be omitted if you have had it shielded in the Trade Register (Handelsregister), which is possible and very common for home-based businesses.
Your business email address and phone number
A practical note: I strongly recommend separating your business email address from your personal one. Having a business email account will not only ensure better protection for you, your clients and business partners, but will also help set better boundaries to protect your work-life balance and mental health.
Where and how to reach you, including how to submit complaints.
If you sell or provide services through your website
This is where most solopreneurs miss something. If your website is where clients actually hire or buy from you, few more items become mandatory:
Your KVK number
Your btw-id, i.e. your VAT identification number
Disputes committees to which you are affiliated (if any).
If you sell or provide services on behalf of another company
If you are a reseller, you’d need to also provide the following details on your website, depending on whether you are an intermediary or an online platform.
If you are an intermediary (tussenpersoon)
If you sell or act on behalf of another specific company:
Trade name of the seller (i.e. of the company for which you are selling)
Physical address of the seller.
If your website is an online platform
If your website is a marketplace where multiple third-party sellers offer their products or services:
Trade name of the sellers
Contact details of the sellers (address, email address and phone number)
Whether a specific seller is a company or a private individual
In the case of private sellers, that the buyer is not protected by consumer law
Which questions the consumer should direct to you and which to the seller.
Where to show this information on your website
While the Ondernemersplein only provides a general indication as “in a logical place on your website”, the Autoriteit Consument & Markt provides more specific guidelines, both in terms of when and where this information need to be shown.
When
The ACM recommends ensuring that clients can easily find your company details before the purchase.
Where
Explicit examples from ACM include:
Header or footer of your website, which appear on every page of your website
The header or the footer, for example can be the perfect place to show your company name, physical and email address, phone number, KvK and btw-ID.
Contact page
The contact page can instead offer the right space to provide more details about the times to reach you or the ways to submit complaints.
Contract
Your contract will need to show your key business details too, and is also a good place to include information about any disputes committee you are affiliated with.
Catalogue
Your catalogue pages are where consumers will look for details about the seller behind each offer. So that is a natural place to display all relevant information about them.
Business details are just one piece of the puzzle
Business details are just one of the legal requirements your website needs to meet. Privacy notices, cookie consent, and other obligations also apply.
If you want to know where you stand on privacy notices and cookie consent too, the Website Privacy Scan is a good place to start. You can check it out here.
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