What Is a Clickwrap Transaction Platform?

According to Aragon Research, “Clickwrap transactions replace electronic signatures with the act of clicking to check a box or on a button that includes acceptance language (such as “I Agree” or “Accept”).” 

Clickwrap transaction platforms can be used for three primary use cases:

• Prepare, deliver, update, and audit clickwrap transactions across your business
• Reduce legal fees and eliminate labor intensive processes like negotiation of high volume agreements
• Secure eCommerce transactions with vaulting and screenshots of clickwrap transactions.

In every business, there are various types of agreements that your company reviews, (potentially) negotiates, and executes. With the surge in eCommerce in 2020, enterprises are shifting more transactions to be online. Those transactions may have varying levels of complexity from simple eCommerce with standard terms and conditions to highly complex, personalized agreements that need to be redlined and signed.

Digital Transaction Management and electronic signature solutions are designed to enable people to digitize paper-based processes that are more complex and still involve people.

Clickwrap Transaction Platforms enable fully digital, fully automated workflows with a content management engine powering every transaction, not a person or approval workflow that can get held up and deliver transactions from taking place.

The above graphic shows that Digital Transaction Management tools like electronic signature providers are better suited for a more complex, lower volume set of agreements.

The simplest example of a clickwrap transaction is when presenting a checkbox with a link to terms and conditions as part of a purchase. The buyer will check the box to accept the terms which represents manifestation of acceptance to the agreement, legally compliant by ESIGN law.

Clickwrap Transaction Platforms automatically version, tailor the agreement(s), publish terms online, track the connectivity of the checkbox and link to the actual published page, and can also capture screenshots of the page automatically.

Conducting a clickwrap fire drill – Audit an existing clickwrap transaction in your business to assess the security, archiving, and screenshots:

• What version of the terms and conditions did the customer accept?
• What did the screen look like when they accepted?
• Can we easily produce a document or set of documents ready for court proving all of this?
• How easy is it to pull this information?

Based on your preparedness for each use case you run your fire drill for, you can quickly prioritize what clickwrap transactions may need more security or enhanced capabilities from a CTP.

Assess your contract ecosystem – Look at all the various contracts and high volume agreements that you have across the business with key inputs from your legal team, marketing, product, and IT. You can create two sets axes that help assess the value of where your opportunities for improvement may lie:

• Identify high volume, lower complexity transactions that are low hanging fruit for optimization with a CTP
• Map ease of implementation against the time savings and speed improvements delivered by optimizing a transaction workflow

Identify opportunities to use data instead of people

Many transaction workflows require sales people, legal review, or finance-based approvals to complete. These additional steps decrease your time to revenue and have other operational impacts in your business.

Consider finding opportunities where you can optimize these workflows by:

• Setting up dynamic, pre-negotiated terms that can be embedded into an automated workflow
• Segmenting different types of agreements that are higher volume
• Using code or CRM data from tools like Salesforce to streamline document generation and eliminate unnecessary steps

Our team has read every case and established best practices. We’d love to help walk you through how you can present and manage clickwrap agreements that are legally binding and best for your customer experience. Request a consultation today!