How Does Clickwrap Give You a Competitive Edge?

COVID-19 has changed the face of business forever. According to McKinsey, B2B buyers and sellers now prefer self-service and remote experiences over face-to-face interactions. Digital experiences are safer and make it easier for sellers and buyers to place orders, communicate, and get information. With just a few taps on their phone, sellers and buyers can draft, execute, and manage deals. Live chat and video calls have also emerged as the predominant channels for attracting and closing deals with customers: video conferences have jumped from 38% to 53% since COVID-19, while traditional in-person sales models have decreased from 61% to 29%. 

Businesses must consider streamlining their websites, apps, and other offerings to keep up with the breakneck speed of digital transactions. They also need to think about updating their contracts. If contracts can’t keep up with modern business, they can’t provide value. 

That’s why every business owner should consider adopting clickwrap. A digitally native contract solution, clickwrap is seamless to deploy and simplifies the contract management process. Unlike traditional electronic contracts, which require signers to physically sign or place their signatures onto a PDF or Word contract, clickwrap contracts only need signers to click a button or box to say “I agree.” 

Here are five ways clickwrap provides a competitive advantage.

Traditional PDF or Word contracts are often scattered throughout your enterprise, often in hard-to-reach areas like USBs, inboxes, and hard drives. In contrast, clickwrap contracts are stored in a centralized, searchable hub that anyone with the proper authorization can access. This makes answering contract questions and keeping track of deadlines easier than ever.

A centralized hub will also give Legal complete control over every version of your clickwrap contracts, so you won’t have to file a ticket every time you want to make a minor change. Every version of the contract is safely stored so that you can always recover previous versions as needed.

Unlike eSignature or PDF contracts—which are essentially digitized paper contracts—clickwrap contracts are digital or HTML native. This means they can be built into your website or app. Since they’re part of your site or app, signers don’t need to download a PDF or Word doc. They just have to click a box or button to indicate they assent to your terms, and they’re good to go. Digitally native clickwrap contracts are also a lot easier to read and agree to than PDFs or Word docs, which often don’t work properly or display poorly on phones.

Because it’s easier for customers to read and sign documents, companies can sign deals and increase their Return on Investment (ROI) much faster.  Extra Space Storage, for example, experienced tremendous growth after shifting to digitally native contracts that were built into their website. After integrating  Ironclad Clickwrap into their workflow, Extra Space Storage:

• Decreased time to capture desktop signatures by 80%
• Decreased time to capture mobile signatures by 63%
• Increased mobile lease signing by 48%

“Reviewing 7-12 page PDFs on your phone doesn’t work very well,” noted Extra Space Storage. “Sometimes customers couldn’t scroll, and links were partially hidden on smaller screens.” Since customers could now move in and out of the contract signing process at lightning speed, Extra Space Storage experienced a rapid increase in completed deals and higher customer satisfaction than ever before. They also had fewer customer calls since customers could serve themselves and sign leases online on-demand.

Back-end records are data that show which user agreed to your clickwrap contract, when, how, and other vital data points that prove someone actually accepted your contract. They are important because they show detailed information about who accepted which contract and when. As such, they’re more likely to be accepted as evidence in court than other types of evidence, such as screenshots and affidavits. 

For example, in Tanis v. Southwest, the court enforced Southwest Airlines’ contract because Southwest Airlines could produce detailed back-end records. When the disgruntled employee checked off the box at the bottom of the company’s clickwrap contract, Southwest Airlines’ clickwrap software automatically generated an electronic record showing the following:

• The employee’s ID and name
• The exact time and date the employee checked the box to indicate her assent to the contract terms

If an organization can’t produce detailed back-end records, the court will probably refuse to enforce its clickwrap agreement. In Nager v. Tesla, the court declined to enforce Tesla’s contract because Tesla could only produce a “random document” that had no apparent connection to the customer or transaction.

You can use clickwrap for any contract as long as you follow clickwrap best practices. However, clickwrap is better suited for certain agreements, such as standardized contracts. Unlike personalized contracts, standardized contracts don’t need to be individually reviewed or edited before being accepted since they tend to use the same or similar language for all signers. 

Standardized contracts also require little negotiation and tend to be executed and accepted at a high volume by many people at once. Examples include:

• Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs)
• Master service agreements (MSAs)
• Influencer agreements
• Terms of Service agreements
• Statements of Work (SOWs)
• Software licenses
• Rental property agreements
• Non-compete agreements
• Employment agreements

In other words, you can get more out of your clickwrap contracts when you understand your contract ecosystem: the types of contracts you use, for whom, and how often they are used. Once you have a firm grasp of the contract types in your organizational database, you’ll be able to differentiate between personalized and standardized contracts. 

After integrating clickwrap into your standardized contracts, you can apply clickwrap to the personalized contracts that require minimal negotiation and tend to be executed and accepted at a relatively high volume.

Finally, clickwrap gives you a competitive advantage because most businesses still use clunky PDFs and Word contracts. While many organizations have shifted to clickwrap for standardized contracts like NDAs and Terms of Service agreements, most still use traditional eSignatures for personalized contracts. 

Consider adopting clickwrap for personalized contracts to stand out from your competitors.  DoorDash, for example, uses Ironclad Clickwrap to generate a wide range of standardized and personalized agreements for merchants. This is how it works:

1. A merchant fills in a form on the DoorDash website.
2. Ironclad Clickwrap uses that information to generate the right agreement for them on the spot.

Since Ironclad Clickwrap automatically generates a contract for merchants to sign based on their individual characteristics, DoorDash’s Legal team doesn’t have to draft or send contracts to merchants manually. This gives them more time and energy to work on more important projects.

Clickwrap will also help Legal save a lot of time and energy since customers can sign and consent to terms through your website and app. Without clickwrap, Legal would have to send PDFs directly into customers’ inboxes every time they need them to sign something.

For instance, Snap Inc. helped their legal team save “dozens of hours a month” by clickwrapping high-volume, low-value Creative Services Agreements (CSAs). Before they were clickwrapped, Snap’s CSAs were a constant source of friction since Legal had to do all the work every time advertisers needed escalations and internal legal approvals. After using clickwrap on their CSAs, Snap’s Legal team finally had more time to focus on high-value deals that required human ingenuity. Instead of receiving PDF contracts in their email, advertisers could go straight to Snap’s website and app and accept CSAs there.

All in all, clickwrap offers many competitive advantages. Sleek and powerful, clickwrap is a digitally native solution that empowers you to keep up with the breakneck speed of digital transactions. Clickwrap contracts are easy to manage, offer better customer experiences, and provide excellent back-end records. You can also apply clickwrap to any contract and automate the contracting process.

If you’re interested in experiencing the clickwrap difference, consider getting Ironclad Clickwrap. Intuitive and codeless, Ironclad Clickwrap allows you to streamline and accelerate enforceable online. Instead of drafting and sending individual contracts to signers, all you have to do is embed HTML-native contracts on your app or website to deliver a frictionless customer experience. Ironclad Clickwrap empowers Legal to manage everything in a single hub, so they can produce a crystal-clear audit trail for courts as needed. Our software also comes with Public Workflows, which reduces negotiation by giving counterparties self-serve options.

Interested? Use the form at the bottom to request an Ironclad Clickwrap demo. Our demo will show you the Ironclad Clickwrap advantage.