Disclaimer: Always consult a lawyer who is familiar with the eSignature laws that govern your business. The following post is not legal advice.

The ESIGN Act changed the game for eSignatures back in 2000. Since then, hundreds of eSignature services have been created to help facilitate eSigning documents. There’s no doubt that these services provide a lot of value. However, they are sometimes unnecessarily used in the middle of important customer transactions which can negatively impact conversion rates. The goal of this post is to demonstrate to you how your users can eSign documents on your website without using eSignature services like DocuSign. You’ll also be shown how two companies use this method in practice — Wefunder and Planet Fitness.

What does it take for a customer’s eSignature to be legally binding? According to UETA and the ESIGN Act, there are four major requirements.

Intent to sign — All parties must have intended to sign the document. Consent to do business electronically—A user must affirmatively agree to use electronic records for the transaction. Association of signature with the record — The user’s signature should be applied to the document in a textual or graphical way. Record retention — The user should be able to save the document after it is signed.

Based on these requirements, it’s not very difficult to collect eSignatures in your customer flows. Here are the items you need in order to do so:

Action Item #1: Allow users to affirmatively provide electronic consent