Website legal notice check sheet: does every client website show the name, geographic address, email, register and VAT number? (e-Commerce Directive Article 5) for accountants and web agencies
Partner programme opening soon: join the free waitlist. Planned terms are 50% of each referred sale (75% once you have 5+ paying customers), single level, paid through Gumroad only from revenue received.
What you get: a finished website legal notice check sheet in two tabs: a websites tab with one row per website (yours, or each client's) and a result formula that names exactly which basic identity item is missing, such as "geographic address" or "VAT number"; and a fix letter tab with a short note you can send to each client listing their gaps. Five made-up example rows show how it fills in.
Short answer: Article 5(1) of the e-Commerce Directive (2000/31/EC) says a business with a website or web shop must make "easily, directly and permanently accessible" at least: (a) its name; (b) the geographic address where it is established; (c) contact details "including his electronic mail address" that allow it to be contacted "rapidly" and "in a direct and effective manner"; (d) its trade register and registration number, if registered; (e) the supervisory authority, if the activity needs an authorisation; (f) for regulated professions (accountants, tax advisers, lawyers and others), the professional body, title and Member State, and a reference to the professional rules; and (g) the VAT identification number, if the activity is subject to VAT. If you sell to consumers at a distance, Article 6(1)(c) of the Consumer Rights Directive (2011/83/EU, as amended from 28 May 2022) adds the telephone number and email address before the consumer is bound.
The pain this page is about
An accountant with 60 small-business clients, or a web agency with 40 client sites, is asked: "is our website legally complete?" Opening 60 footers and legal notice pages by hand takes a day. Running one list of domains through a contact scraper fills the email and phone columns in minutes, shows the page each was found on, and leaves you only the name, address, register and VAT columns to tick by hand.
Step 1: put every website in one list
Column A of the sheet: one domain per row (bakery-example.de, studio-example.nl). Add your own firm's website as row 2: an accountancy or tax firm is usually a regulated profession, so item (f) applies to your own site too.
Step 2: fill the email and phone columns with the scraper
Run our Website Contact Scraper on the list. It returns one row per website with a status, the role emails (info@, office@, support@) checked against the domain's mail servers, phone numbers normalised to international format, and the page each one was found on. It reads the homepage first, then the most contact-like pages: contact, about, impressum, support. Emails that identify one person are dropped by default and only counted in personalEmailsDropped; if that count is above 0 and no role email was found, look at the page by hand. Sites whose robots.txt or terms forbid crawling are skipped (and not charged) with a status such as blocked-by-terms; check those by hand.
Step 3: tab 1, websites (one row per site)
| Column | What to write | Source |
|---|---|---|
| A. Website | The domain | |
| B. Scraper status | From the export: status (ok, blocked-by-terms, blocked-by-robots, failed and others) | |
| C. Email shown | Y if the export has at least one email on the site's own domain; else check the page and write Y or N | ECD Art. 5(1)(c); CRD Art. 6(1)(c) |
| D. Phone shown | Y if the export has at least one valid phone; else N | CRD Art. 6(1)(c) |
| E. Page found on | The page URL the export gives for the email or phone. If it is the legal notice (impressum, imprint, mentions légales, aviso legal, colofon) page, open that page for columns F to M | |
| F. Name shown | Y/N: the business's name (for a company, its full legal name) | ECD Art. 5(1)(a) |
| G. Geographic address shown | Y/N: the street address where the business is established. Our working rule: a PO box or a bare city name gets N | ECD Art. 5(1)(b) |
| H. In a trade register? | Y/N (ask the client or look it up) | ECD Art. 5(1)(d) |
| I. Register and number shown | Y/N, blank if H is N | ECD Art. 5(1)(d) |
| J. Activity subject to VAT? | Y/N (you know this from the books) | ECD Art. 5(1)(g) |
| K. VAT number shown | Y/N, blank if J is N | ECD Art. 5(1)(g) |
| L. Licensed activity or regulated profession? | Y/N | ECD Art. 5(1)(e), (f) |
| M. Authority or professional details shown | Y/N, blank if L is N: supervisory authority; or professional body, title, Member State and the rules | ECD Art. 5(1)(e), (f) |
| N. Sells to consumers online? | Y if the site takes orders or bookings from consumers; else N | CRD Art. 2(7), 6(1) |
| O. Second rapid contact means | Y if besides email there is a phone, or a contact form that is answered quickly (see the FAQ); else N | ECD Art. 5(1)(c); C-298/07 |
| P. Missing items | =TEXTJOIN(", ",TRUE,IF(F2<>"Y","name",""),IF(G2<>"Y","geographic address",""),IF(C2<>"Y","email",""),IF(AND(H2="Y",I2<>"Y"),"register and number",""),IF(AND(J2="Y",K2<>"Y"),"VAT number",""),IF(AND(L2="Y",M2<>"Y"),"authority or professional details",""),IF(AND(N2="Y",D2<>"Y"),"telephone (consumer sales)",""),IF(AND(N2<>"Y",D2<>"Y",O2<>"Y"),"second contact means","")) | Formulas and labels are our working rule, not a legal test. TEXTJOIN works in Google Sheets and Excel 2019 or later |
| Q. Result | =IF(B2<>"ok","CHECK BY HAND: scraper "&B2,IF(P2="","OK: basic identity items shown","FIX: "&P2)) |
"Easily, directly and permanently accessible" is about where the details sit, not only whether they exist. Our working rule: one click from every page, usually a footer link named in the site's language, not hidden in a PDF or behind a login.
Step 4: tab 2, fix letter (one row per client with a FIX)
| Column | What to write |
|---|---|
| A. Client | Name |
| B. Website | From tab 1 |
| C. Missing | =XLOOKUP(B2,Websites!A:A,Websites!P:P) (or VLOOKUP) |
| D. Note to send | ="Hello, we checked "&B2&" on "&TEXT(TODAY(),"dd mmm yyyy")&". EU rules ask your website to show your basic business details. We could not find: "&C2&". Please add them to your legal notice page, or tell us if they are already there and we missed them." |
| E. Sent on / fixed on | Dates |
Made-up example (five rows, tab 1 results only)
| Website (made up) | What the site shows | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Your own tax firm | Name, street address, info@ email, phone, register number, VAT number; no professional body or rules | FIX: authority or professional details |
| Bakery web shop, sells to consumers | Name, address, email, VAT number; no phone; in the trade register but no number shown | FIX: register and number, telephone (consumer sales) |
| Design studio, business clients only | Name, PO box, contact form answered within the hour, no email | FIX: geographic address, email |
| Plumber, booking form for consumers | Everything, including phone and VAT number | OK: basic identity items shown |
| Hotel site | Scraper status blocked-by-terms | CHECK BY HAND: scraper blocked-by-terms |
These rows are invented to show the formula. They are not real businesses or websites.
Try it on ten client websites first
Actor fee: free during launch · you pay only Apify usage
The Actor is pay-per-usage on Apify: you pay only for the compute the run uses, and Apify's free plan includes $5 of usage a month (apify.com/pricing). We do not quote a cost per 100 websites; run ten, check three rows by hand against the live sites, then run the rest. Built and published by Unadhi (disclosure).
Free gift: copy-paste input for ten client websites
Replace the domains with your clients' websites and DE with your country code, so phone numbers without a country prefix are read correctly. Related sheets: web agency client website contact check · Google listing vs website phone check · GPSR product page check · EU soft opt-in permission sheet.
Frequently asked questions
Does every website need a phone number?
Under the e-Commerce Directive, not necessarily. In deutsche internet versicherung (C-298/07, 16 October 2008) the Court of Justice held that, besides the email address, the provider must give another means of rapid, direct and effective contact, which "does not necessarily have to be a telephone number"; an online enquiry form answered by email can be enough (in that case replies came within 30 to 60 minutes), but a non-electronic means must be offered on request to someone without network access. For distance sales to consumers, Article 6(1)(c) of the Consumer Rights Directive, as amended by Directive (EU) 2019/2161 from 28 May 2022, lists the telephone number and email address as information to give.
Is the VAT number always required on the website?
Article 5(1)(g) asks for it "where the service provider undertakes an activity that is subject to VAT". A small business that is not subject to VAT has nothing to show under (g); write N in column J.
Are these all the rules for a legal notice?
No. These are the EU minimums. Article 5(1) starts "at least", and each Member State writes its own national law with its own wording and sometimes extra items, and other EU laws add more (for example price, withdrawal and complaint information for consumer sales in Article 6 of the Consumer Rights Directive). Check your country's rule before you tell a client their site is complete.
What happens if details are missing?
Both directives leave penalties to the Member States, which must be "effective, proportionate and dissuasive" (e-Commerce Directive Article 20; Consumer Rights Directive Article 24).
Not legal advice. The result formula only checks whether information is shown, not whether it is correct, current or placed where national law wants it. When in doubt, ask your chamber, professional body or a lawyer. Spotted an error? Write to mininglife7@gmail.com and we correct it.
Sources
- Directive 2000/31/EC on electronic commerce, Articles 2, 5, 6 and 20 — eur-lex.europa.eu, CELEX 32000L0031 (read 28 Oct 2026)
- Directive 2011/83/EU on consumer rights, consolidated text of 28 May 2022, Articles 2(2), 2(7), 5(1)(b), 6(1)(b) to (d) and 24 — eur-lex.europa.eu, CELEX 02011L0083-20220528 (read 28 Oct 2026)
- Directive (EU) 2019/2161 (Omnibus), Article 7 (applies from 28 May 2022) and the recital removing the fax number from Article 6(1)(c) — eur-lex.europa.eu, CELEX 32019L2161 (read 28 Oct 2026)
- Court of Justice, Case C-298/07 Bundesverband der Verbraucherzentralen v deutsche internet versicherung AG, judgment of 16 October 2008, paras. 31, 32, 35, 40 and ruling — eur-lex.europa.eu, CELEX 62007CJ0298 (read 28 Oct 2026)
- Unadhi Actor on Apify Store: Website Contact Scraper (README read through the Apify API); Apify pricing (checked 28 Oct 2026)
Unadhi Guides are free, independent explainers. We correct errors as soon as we find them: write to mininglife7@gmail.com.