Category: Website Planning

If you do any kind of business online, the last thing you want to do is to learn the hard way that you have broken the law.

Internet laws, regulations, and guidelines were designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to any person who markets, sells or promotes products or services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law will not excuse you from being slapped with a legal notice.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for profit, you must follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the BBB, or Better Business Bureau. 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)

These laws affect various online business categories, including:

• Any kind of advertising, including Google AdWords
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creators
• Blogging
• etc.

Without legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t allow you to list digital products, PayPal could suspend your account, Facebook could suspend your applications, and you will not be allowed to enroll in a range of advertising or affiliate marketing networks.

If your online business is not in compliance, you could face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

The purpose of this article is to make you aware that your website are subject to legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern your business, the importance of complying with the terms of service of other providers whose services or products you may be offering online, and that there are plugins for WordPress that can help your online properties become compliant, such as the plugins listed further below.

Does Your Website Comply With The Law?

Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice about your website or business. As previously stated, 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 and regulations that govern business and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of providers whose products or services you advertise on your website

Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important

Consider for a minute what the implications to your business would be if any of these situations were to happen:

• Someone has a cardiac arrest after they use your online fitness workout.
• The skin care products you promote as an affiliate gives someone who purchases from your link allergic reactions.
• Your opt-in list provides a statement letting subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t spelled out exactly what you’ll do with their details.
• Someone copies content from your site and publishes it on their site.
• You did not tell your site users that you are endorsing a product as an affiliate and may receive a commission if visitors decide to buy via your link.
• You have not spelled out the conditions of your return policies.
• Online visitors claim that your testimonials are misleading and try to sue you.
• You haven’t disclosed that you were given a free copy of the product in your review.
• Your site publishes adult information and you did not take sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged persons.

Consider too the following actual examples of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up personal information to complete an offer they were promoting. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer copped a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private details about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping UIDs. Many internet marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
• An independent study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, more than 90% were in violation of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had infringed 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 entirely to the Google program they had violated, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how a business owner can easily be exposed to the risk of litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Marketer
• AdWords Advertiser
• Niche Publisher
• Amazon Associate
• EBay Seller
• Adult Content Publisher
• Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
• Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service

it’s important to ensure that your website or blog complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.

All the leading online companies and government regulatory agencies emphasize the importance of observing the terms and policies of 3rd-party service providers.

You are required to let your site visitors know that your business complies will all legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you will interact with.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires your site to display legal information if using their products. This includes using Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Making money online with your WordPress blogs using Google AdSense display advertising …

(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)

Or promoting your site using Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you sell information-based products with merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you are required to add various legal pages to your site before your products can be approved for sale …

(Policy requirements for vendors selling via ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you display clear disclaimers and policy statements to visitors, especially if you plan to use product testimonials or endorsements …

(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Be Compliant

FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many sites are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As documented on their website, this often results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting website owners in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you plan to do any type of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business interests by ensuring that your site complies with FTC guidelines.

Many resources online provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. See our additional references and resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(Structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Social Media Apps - Don’t Forget These

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

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are not sure whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote services or products on your site via affiliate marketing, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon ads, or using Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to provide on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts terminated.
• If you have been wondering whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to act now and take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use)

Common Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Website

If you suspect that your website falls short in aspects of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

Adding the following legal pages to your website should help your website keep out of trouble with most regulatory agencies and external providers, and even help to avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):

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

As well as the above pages, you may want to look into implementing any of the pages listed below where applicable:

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides financial information)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Audio/Video Terms Of Use (if you allow media downloads on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

It’s important to add the right disclosure information to your website. For example:

• No Material Connection – This lets users be aware that you will not receive any form of payment for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Notifies visitors that you may derive some form of financial or similar type of benefit if they purchase through one of your affiliate links.
• Sample Or review Copy – Informs site users that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product or service.
• Sponsored Post – Discloses to site users that you have been compensated in some form to write the article.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs visitors that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to satisfy the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring website publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Legal Content To Your WordPress Site

Ideally, you will have a lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this completed, there are several ways to include them in your website.

Uploading Legal Web Pages Manually

If someone prepares and delivers the legal content 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 adding a legal folder to your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory (e.g. via FTP) …

(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your server and upload pages using FTP)

You can then easily add a link to your legal pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …

(WordPress Menu)

Displaying Legal Web Pages On Your Website

Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and clearly visible to your visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to the sidebar menu (or the footer of your website) to ensure that users can access the information from every web page …

(It’s important to display links to your legal pages to visitors on all of your website’s pages)

For a detailed tutorial on adding links to pages on your sidebar using widgets, refer to this tutorial:

• Using WordPress Widgets

Templates

You can find attorney-drafted disclosures and downloadable forms and agreements by searching online, or by going to websites like this one:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms – Legal forms)

More information:

• Find Legal Forms – Legal forms

Another option is to download a set of website legal templates written by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Website Legal Pages)

These legal pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with search and replace to add your own business name and URL, then pasted into your web pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance
• Privacy Policy: Google, DART, etc.
• ToS & Conditions of Use: includes 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 website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload the pages to your web server as described previously.

For more information, go here:

• Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates

Legal Page Plugins

As well as using templates, another option is to use WordPress plugins.

Here are some plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:

WP Legal Pages

(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)

If you don’t want to bother with creating legal pages manually, then consider choosing WordPress Legal Pages instead …

WordPress Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s an affordable and well-supported plugin that will make the task of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site a lot easier and save you many headaches.

Some of the benefits of using the WordPress Legal Pages plugin are:

• Pre-written Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the basic legal pages you need in around 3 minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
• Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages like every other WordPress page.
• Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your content when published.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like every other WordPress page.
• Forced Options – Force page lockdown. Page unlocks and can be accessed when the user agrees to your legal terms.
• New Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will appear inside your main navigation menu …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Legal Pages Menu)

This allows you to create, view and edit your legal pages from your admin area …

(WP Legal Pages – Settings)

The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites with products, affiliate websites, Amazon sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Page type drop down menu)

Choose from various built-in legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Pre-configured 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

Visit the plugin website to learn more this great plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users with over 20 customizable compliance pages for your digital presence …

More info:

• Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro)

This plugin 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 – 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. Your legal pages can be 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.

Go here for more info:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If using the services of lawyers to create your online legal documentation is out of your budget, then consider at least implementing some form of basic legal protection on your website until you can afford a lawyer.

We want your site to be protected!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal documents, or plugins as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator Software allows you to quickly generate basic legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you do any kind of business online, it’s important that your site complies with all legal requirements and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines provided by third-party sites that you may decide to promote or use online. Your digital presence must comply with a whole set of regulations, some of which you may not be aware of.

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, 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 about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law concerning your specific business.

Additional Information

Here is a time-saving list of sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what your website may require to stay compliant and meet legal requirements and guidelines:

• Federal Trade Commission Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• FTC 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
• AdSense Help – Required Content
• Google AdWords – Information Collection And Use
• Google 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 the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your website using inexpensive methods and solutions.

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