Practice area
E-commerce law: shop, blog, platform
Marketing products and services online matters greatly to many companies. Wide reach, good cost efficiency and a low barrier to entry have made e-commerce an everyday matter.
E-commerce law is meant to balance the interests of the various players. It strengthens consumer confidence in online trade, encourages fair business practices and creates a stable and transparent environment for electronic commerce. We review shops and platforms from Hannover, for clients across Germany.
Where we support you
- Legally sound web shops
- Reducing the risk of warning letters
- Drafting distance selling contracts
- Right of withdrawal and withdrawal notice
- Design of the order button and the cancellation button
- Price indication rules
Three occasions, three approaches
Before launch come the foundations: conclusion of contract and ordering process, standard terms and withdrawal instructions, mandatory information on prices, shipping costs and delivery times, plus the data protection notices. We review the shop before it goes live, because a correction beforehand is considerably cheaper than a warning letter afterwards.
Once a shop is running, the requirements keep changing anyway. We compare your texts and processes against the current legal position, in particular for price indications, reviews, advertising claims and button design, and tell you what needs adjusting first.
The deadlines are short and the enclosed cease-and-desist declaration is regularly drawn more widely than the claim. We check whether it is justified, draft a modified declaration where appropriate and fend off unfounded demands. Get in touch early, not on the last day of the period.
What is coming up
The withdrawal button arrives on 19 June 2026. Anyone offering consumers a contract online will have to provide a clearly visible and easily accessible function for exercising the right of withdrawal. That is more than a button in the customer account. The confirmation has to be provable, the privacy notice needs adjusting, and anyone who makes the route awkward invites the same warning letters as with the cancellation button under section 312k BGB.
The cancellation button still keeps the courts busy. It has applied to continuing obligations since July 2022, and the courts read it strictly. What gets challenged is rarely the absence of the button but the route to it, such as a login placed in front of it or a confirmation page that tries once more to talk the customer out of leaving.
We review both together with the ordering process, because the same pages are affected.
From cookies to the warning letter
Tracking and audience measurement
Access to a terminal device and the processing that follows are governed by section 25 TDDDG and the GDPR alongside each other, so both have to be considered together. Where the service sits in a third country, the transfer of the data needs its own legal basis.
Advertising and online marketing
Newsletters, marketing to existing customers and personalised advertising follow different rules, and section 7 UWG is often stricter than data protection law. In a dispute, the record of consent decides the outcome.
When a warning letter arrives
The deadlines are short and the enclosed cease-and-desist undertaking is regularly drafted wider than the claim. We examine whether it is justified, draft a modified undertaking where appropriate, and fend off unfounded demands.
Have your shop reviewed before launch?
A correction beforehand costs less than a warning letter afterwards.
Have the shop reviewedTopics in this practice area
- Cookie bannersDesigning cookie banners that hold up: consent under German law, equal weight for rejection, documentation and the most common design mistakes.
- Online marketing and the GDPRUsing Google Analytics, consent management and targeted ads lawfully: review of your websites and advice on how to integrate them.
- Tracking under German lawTracking under the German Telecommunications Digital Services Data Protection Act: device access, the narrow necessity exception and the link to the GDPR.
- Transparency and labelling dutiesArticle 50 AI Act: people must learn when they talk to a chatbot, and generated content needs marking. Deadlines and implementation.
Frequently asked questions
When does the withdrawal period start in online retail?
For deliveries of goods on receipt of the goods, for several part deliveries on the last of them, for services on conclusion of the contract. This presupposes proper instructions on the right of withdrawal. Where they are missing or defective, the period is extended considerably. Reviewing the instructions is therefore worth more than arguing about the individual case.
May we advertise with struck-through prices?
Yes, but the reference figure is prescribed. Where a price is reduced, the lowest total price applied in the thirty days before the reduction has to be stated. A comparison with a recommended retail price, or with your own price from the day before yesterday, does not satisfy that requirement.
What applies to customer reviews in the shop?
Anyone advertising with reviews has to state whether and how they ensure that the reviews come from people who actually used the product. Bought reviews and the suppression of negative ones are misleading. Both are among the points competitors regularly send warning letters about.
We sell through a marketplace. Who owes the mandatory information?
You do. The information duties bind the trader who concludes the contract with the consumer, not the platform. The marketplace merely provides fields. Whether they are filled in correctly is your responsibility. Pre-populated text from the operator is therefore no substitute for your own review.