Category: Website Planning

One of the worst things that can happen to a business owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.

As the digital economy continues to grow at an overwhelming speed and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s vitally important to stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if having an online presence is a fundamental factor in your overall business strategy.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for profit, you need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the Better Business Bureau, also referred to as BBB. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – BBB)

These laws affect various business activities, including:

• Any form of advertising, including text link ads, Google Adsense, etc.
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creation
• Blogging
• etc.

If there are no legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account, Facebook will disapprove your applications, and you will not be allowed to enrol in a range of advertising or affiliate merchant networks.

If your digital presence is not compliant, you could face a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

In this article, we discuss why it’s important to have a compliant website and how to quickly add legal pages to your website or blog using simple solutions.

Is Your Website Breaking Rules Or Regulations?

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice in this article. As stated above, the purpose of this article is to make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with the laws that govern business and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of providers whose products or services you use

Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important

Consider for a minute what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• Someone has a heart attack after purchasing your online fitness workout.
• The skin cream you promote as an affiliate marketer gives someone allergic reactions.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t clearly spelled out what you’ll do with their details.
• Someone steals your content and puts it up on their own site.
• There is no statement on your website telling your visitors that you’re an affiliate for the product you’re selling and will receive a financial benefit if visitors purchase it.
• You don’t spell out the conditions of your return policies.
• A visitor claims the testimonials on your site are fake and tries to sue you.
• You didn’t disclose that you have received a free copy of a product in your review.
• Your website contains adult-related information and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to keep underaged persons from accessing it.

Consider now these actual examples of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up their personal information to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, he was also ordered to provide everyone they do business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
• A social networking app developer copped a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private details.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping UIDs. Many internet marketers took a risk 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 websites chosen at random, more than 90% were in breach of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were breaking at least three 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 with the infringement, 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:

• CPA (Cost Per Action) or PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Promoter
• AdSense Publisher
• Info Product Marketer
• Amazon Associate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
• Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online

It’s imperative to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your website is legally compliant.

Complying With 3rd-Party Services

Complying with third-party companies terms and policies is important.

You must let your site users know that your business complies with laws and recommended guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you do business with online.

For example:

Google requires websites to display legal information if using their services. This includes Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Generating revenue online with your blog using Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense policy requirements)

Or promoting your products through Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to sell information-based products via merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you are required to add certain legal pages to your site before they will approve your products for sale …

(ClickBank – policy requirements)

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to include clear disclaimers and policy statements on your website, especially if you plan to use product testimonials or endorsements …

(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Comply

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many websites are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As is already the case, this often results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting site owners in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you do any kind of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. you should protect your business interests by making sure that your site complies with all FTC guidelines and regulations.

You can find many business resources that can provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. See the references and useful resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(You must word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)

Don’t Forget Social Media Apps

If you are planning to create applications that integrate with your website, sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others will require you to provide information about various legal pages …

(Facebook apps also require compliance)

• If you are unsure as to whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote anything on your site via affiliate marketing, or monetizing your pages with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon ads, or driving visitors to your site with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to provide on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts terminated.
• If you have ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)

What Compliance Pages Should You Add To Your Website To Be Compliant?

If your web site falls short in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your website should help keep you out of trouble with most consumer protection agencies and external service providers, and avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):

• About Us
• Contact Us
• Privacy Statement
• Terms Of Use
• Disclaimer Pages
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

Additionally, you may want to look into including any of the pages listed below:

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides health or medical information)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Media Terms Of Use (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

Adding the right type of disclosure to your website is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Informs readers that you will not receive for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Lets visitors know that you will receive compensation if they purchase through an affiliate link.
• Sample/Review Copy – Discloses to visitors that you have received a sample or review copy of the product.
• Sponsored Post – Lets users know that you were compensated in some form to write the article.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs users that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to comply with the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring online publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Legal Pages To Your Website

Ideally, you should have a lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once this has been completed, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Upload Legal Pages To Your Website

If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload them for you.

We recommend adding a legals directory to your web server and uploading your legal pages to this directory using FTP …

(Upload legal pages to your web server via FTP)

You can then easily add links to your pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …

(WordPress Menu)

Where To Display Legal Web Pages On Your Site

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are fully up-to-date and display clearly to your visitors. You can add these to your sidebar menu (or place them in the footer section of your website or blog) so that visitors will be able to access legal information from all your web pages …

(Display links to your legal information on all of your site’s pages)

We have created a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your sidebar and footer using widgets here:

• How To Add And Configure WordPress Widgets In The Sidebar

Legal Templates

You can find attorney-prepared downloadable forms and agreements just by searching online, or visiting sites like this one:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms – Attorney-prepared legal forms)

For more details, visit this website:

• FindLegalForms.com

Another option is to purchase a set of cut & paste website legal templates drafted by attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Legal Form Templates)

Cut & Paste website legal templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with a simple quick search and replace to insert your own details, then pasted into your web pages.

The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Page Templates include:

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates Federal Trade Commission regulations brought into effect on March 2012)
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.

You can either create a new 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 web server as described earlier.

More information:

• Scott Talbert’s Legal Templates

Legal Page Plugins

In addition to using legal templates, you can simplify things using WordPress plugins.

Here are some legal WordPress plugins you may be interested in using:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)

If the idea of creating legal pages manually feels too time-consuming for you, then consider choosing a plugin like WP Legal Pages instead …

WordPress Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a very low-priced and well-supported premium plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you loads of headaches.

Some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages plugin are:

• Pre-written Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
• Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the legal pages you will need in a few minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
• Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like every other WP page.
• Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any other WP page.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. When users agree to the terms, the page unlocks.
• Additional Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will appear inside your main navigation area …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)

This lets you create, view and edit legal pages from the admin area …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Screen)

The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, review sites, AdSense sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Type of Site menu)

You can also choose from various built-in legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Built-In Legal 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

Go here to learn more about the benefits of using this plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

total website compliance & disclaimer solution …

Go here to learn more:

• Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress)

Legal Suite Pro 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 Use
• Earnings Disclaimer

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin – 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 site. You can have legal pages installed and set up on your site in less than one minute and the license allows you to install and use this plugin on all of your websites.

More information:

• Legal Suite Pro

If hiring legal experts to create your legal documentation is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic type of legal protection on your site until you can afford professional assistance from a legal expert.

We want your site to be protected!

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 ready-made legal page templates, or plugins as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator allows you to easily generate basic legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

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As stated earlier, if you engage in any form of business online, you need to ensure that your website remains compliant with regulatory agencies and any guidelines and terms of service provided by third-party products and services that you may decide to promote or use online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect 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?

Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with the law concerning your specific business.

Additional Information

Here is a useful list of additional sites we recommend you visit to better understand what your site may require to remain compliant and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:

• FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• Federal Trade Commission Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
• FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
• Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – BBB
• 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 this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your website or blog.

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