Is your website legally compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking any laws, rules or regulations, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose services or products you do business with?
Online laws were designed to protect consumers and apply to any person who sells, markets or promotes goods or services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements will not prevent you from being slapped with a legal notice.
New laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you promote anything on your website for profit, you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the Better Business Bureau, also called the BBB. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(BBB – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
These laws affect various business activities, including:
- Any form of advertising, including Google AdWords or AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creators
- Bloggers
- etc.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not approve digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend web applications, and you will not be allowed to participate in many advertising and online marketing networks.
If your website is not in compliance, you could also face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
This article explains the importance of having a legally compliant website and how to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress website.
Is Your Website Compliant?
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice. You must carry out your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all laws in your country or region.
Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important
Are you at risk? Consider for one minute what could happen to your business if the following incidents were to occur:
- A customer has a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness workout.
- The skin care creams you promote as an affiliate marketer gives someone an allergic reaction.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t clearly spelled out what you plan to do with their details.
- Someone copies your content and puts it up on their website.
- There is no statement on your website or blog letting your site visitors know that you are promoting a product as an affiliate that you will receive a financial benefit if visitors buy it.
- You didn’t spell out the terms of your refund/return policies.
- Online visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are all fake and try to sue you.
- You didn’t disclose in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
- Your site publishes adult content and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to restrict access by underage children.
Consider now the following actual examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up personal information to complete his offer. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, he is now required to provide a copy of the judgement to everyone he does business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
- A social networking app developer was slapped with a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private information about children.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape Users IDs. Many internet marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independent study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% were in breach of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in violation of at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had breached at least 3 of Google’s policies. Although the website owners could technically be sued by Google, more than likely what could happen, is that they would be issued notices or lose access to the Google program whose policies they had infringed, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how easy it is to risk becoming exposed to litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Product Promoter
- AdWords Advertiser
- Niche Marketer
- Amazon Affiliate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
You need to make sure that your website is legally compliant.
Compliance With Third-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.
All the big online companies and government regulatory agencies emphasize the importance of complying with the terms and policies of 3rd-party service providers.
You must let your visitors know that your website complies with legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and buyer confidence in your website, it’s also required by most companies you will do business with.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Google requires your site to display legal information when using many of their products and features. This includes using services like Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Monetizing your website with Google AdSense ads …
(Google AdSense online advertising - policy requirements)
And even promoting your business through Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell information products using places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will need to add legal pages to your site before your products are approved for selling via their network …
(Policy requirements for using ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to display clear disclaimers and policy statements on your site, especially if you plan to use product testimonials or endorsements …
(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)
New FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Comply
New FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many business are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has already been the case, this typically results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting website owners in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you do any type of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business interests by making sure that your website is compliant with all FTC guidelines.
You can find many business resources that can provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. See the additional resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(Structuring your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Social Media Applications Also Have Compliance Requirements
If you are planning to develop social networking applications that will integrate with your website, social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others require you to provide information about various legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are unsure whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of service providers like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote anything on your site via affiliate marketing, or making money online with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, or use Google AdWords pay-per-click ads to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to display on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts shut down.
- If you’ve been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business interests.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
What Compliance Information Should You Add To Your Website To Be Compliant?
If you suspect that your website is lacking in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.
At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your website will keep your business out of trouble with most regulatory agencies and external providers, and even help you avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “takedown” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Page
- Privacy Statement
- Terms & Conditions
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above, you may want to consider adding one or more of these pages if applicable:
- Affiliate Agreement (if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Linking Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides money-making information)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Use Of Media (if you allow media downloads on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding correct disclosure information to your site is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Lets readers know that you’re not receiving compensation for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Disclosure that informs users that you may receive compensation if they act on your recommendation and purchase through affiliate links on your site.
- Sample/Review Copy – Lets users know that you have received a sample or review copy of the product or service by the author or product developer.
- Sponsored Post – Lets your readers be aware that you have been compensated in some way to write the article.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets readers know that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to satisfy the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring online publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Pages To Your Site
Ideally, you should have your lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once this has been done, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Uploading Legal Pages Manually To Your Site
If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend creating a legal directory in your server and uploading your legal pages to this folder using FTP …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your server and upload pages using FTP)
You can then easily add links to these pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …
(WordPress Menu)
Where To Display Legal Web Pages On Your Website
Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and display clearly to all visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your WordPress sidebar (or the footer section of your website) to ensure that users will be able to access legal information from all of your pages …
(Display links to your legal pages to users on all of your site’s pages)
We have created a detailed tutorial on displaying links to pages on your WP sidebar here:
Use Ready-Made Legal Templates
You can easily find downloadable attorney-prepared forms and agreements just by searching online, or by going to sites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms)
Go here for more details:
Another option is to purchase a set of cut and paste website legal templates drafted by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)
These legal pages were written by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with simple search and replace to add your own business name and URL, then pasted into your legal web pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Form Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance
- Privacy Policy
- ToS & Conditions of Use: with inter- & intra-page redundancy, Contra Proferentem provision, reservation of rights, and exclusive social media admonition.
You can either create a new WordPress page for each legal form you want to add to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload the pages to your server as previously described.
More info:
WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages
As well as using copy & paste templates, you can keep things really simple by using plugins.
Here are some WordPress plugins worth looking into:
WordPress Legal Pages
(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to spend time creating legal web pages manually, then consider installing WordPress Legal Pages instead …
The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s an affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you time.
Some of the benefits of using WordPress Legal Pages plugin are:
- Pre-written Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the legal pages you will need in around 3 minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
- Fully Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages like any page on your site.
- Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any page on your site.
- Forced Options – Force page lockdown. When users agree to the terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
- Additional Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item is added to your WordPress dashboard section …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)
This lets you create, view and edit your legal pages from your admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings Area)
The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, affiliate/review sites, e-commerce sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page type dropdown menu)
Select from several pre-written legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Built-In Templates)
Legal page templates include:
- Terms of Use (Users are forced to agree to Terms and Conditions before using site)
- Linking Policy
- External Links Policy
- Terms and Conditions
- Refund Policy
- Affiliate Disclosure
- Privacy Policy
- Affiliate Agreement
- Facebook Privacy Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- Antispam Policy
- DoubleClick DART Cookies Policy
- Disclaimer Template
- FTC Disclosure Statement Template
- Medical Disclaimer Template
- Testimonials Disclosure – As per FTC guidelines
- Amazon Affiliate Disclosure Template
- DMCA Policy Template
- California Privacy Rights Policy Template
- Digital Goods Refund Policy Template
- COPPA – Children’s Online Privacy Policy Template
- Blog Comments Policy Template
- Newsletter Subscription Policy and Disclaimer Template
- FTC Disclaimer Widget
To learn more this great plugin, visit the plugin site:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your online business …
Go here to learn more about this plugin:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress)
Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress lets you easily install professionally-written legal pages such as:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance
- Privacy Policy
- Social Media Disclosure
- Medical Disclaimer
- Terms of Service
- Earnings Disclaimer
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress – Professionally-written legal forms)
Additionally:
- Drag & Drop FTC Disclaimer Widget: Add an FTC Disclaimer to any WordPress sidebar or widget area.
- Customizable EU Cookie Compliance Bar: Display an EU cookie compliance bar if you are getting traffic from the EU and your sites use cookies.
With just one-click you can install almost all of the legal pages your site needs and these professionally written legal pages can be created in your theme and/or as a standalone page outside of your theme.
The plugin developers secured rights to high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers and packaged them into a plugin that can be installed quickly on any WordPress powered site. You can have legal pages installed and set up on your site in one minute or less and the license allows you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
Visit this site to learn more:
If hiring a lawyer to create your legal pages is out of your budget, consider implementing at least some type of legal protection on your website until you can afford to hire the services of a lawyer.
We want your site to be legally safe!
Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (it’s FREE!), or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal documentation, or a plugin as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator Software allows you to easily generate essential legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your website complies with regulatory agencies and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines of 3rd-party products and services that you may decide to promote or use online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering both financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with the law concerning your specific business.
References And Resources
Below is a useful list of sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what your business requires to comply and meet legal obligations:
- Federal Trade Commission Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- Federal Trade Commission Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
- FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
- Better Business Bureau
- Dot Com Disclosures: Information About Online Advertising
- Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act
- CAN-SPAM Act Guide
- Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule
- FTC Regulatory Review Web Page
- FTC Rules and Guides Currently Under Review
- The Department of Commerce Internet Policy Task Force – Commercial Data Privacy and Innovation in the Internet Economy: A Dynamic Policy Framework
- FTC Staff Report: Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising
- FTC Final Guides Governing Endorsements and Testimonials
- United States Patent and Trademark Office
- US Copyright Office
Plus …
- Analytics Help – Policy requirements for Google Analytics Advertising Features
- Google AdSense Program Policies Explained
- Google AdSense Help – Required Content
- Google AdWords – Information Collection And Use
- AdWords Help – What to include in your privacy policy for remarketing
- ClickBank – Creating Your First Product
- Facebook Platform Policies
We hope you have found this article useful and that it has helped you understand why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information above to quickly add essential legal pages to your site.
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