Category: Website Planning

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

As the internet continues to grow at breakneck speed and rules constantly change, it’s absolutely essential that you try to stay informed about what’s going on and make sure that your site remains legal, especially if having a digital presence is a fundamental factor in your overall business strategy.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for material gain, then you must follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the (US based) Better Business Bureau, also known as BBB. Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – Better Business Bureau)

The introduction of these laws has legal implications for various online business activities, including:

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

If your website does not display certain pages (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will disapprove your web applications, and you will not be allowed to promote a number of advertising and online marketing networks.

You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.

In this article, we look at the importance of having a compliant website and how to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website.

Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all laws in your country or region.

Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important

Is your business at risk? Consider for one minute what would happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• A customer has a cardiac arrest after they use your online fitness workout.
• The skin cream you promote as an affiliate gives someone an allergic reaction.
• Your opt-in list displays a statement informing subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you have not clearly informed them what you’ll do with it.
• Someone copies your content and puts it up on their website.
• There is no statement on your site letting your site users know that you’re an affiliate for the product you’re endorsing and will get paid a commission if they buy the product using your link.
• You haven’t spelled out the conditions of your return policies.
• A visitor claims that your testimonials are misleading and decides to sue you.
• You haven’t disclosed in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
• Your website publishes adult-related information and you didn’t take appropriate measures to keep underage persons from accessing it.

Consider now the real case studies of costly compliance breaches described:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up their personal information (including credit card details 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 does not allow users to scrape Users IDs. Many internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
• An independently-conducted study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% were in violation of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had broken at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in breach of 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 entirely 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 be exposed to the risks of non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

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

It’s imperative to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your website stays fully compliant with the law.

Complying With 3rd-Party Companies Terms And Policies

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

You are obligated to let your visitors know that your website complies with legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only improves trust and confidence in your business, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you do business with online.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires you to display certain information when using their products. This includes using Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Monetizing your websites using Google AdSense ads …

(Google AdSense advertising - policy requirements)

And even promoting your business through Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you sell products online via merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you will need to add a number of legal pages before your products are approved for sale in their marketplace …

(Policy requirements for using ClickBank)

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to add clear disclaimers and policy statements to visitors, especially regarding the use of product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)

New FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Comply

FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many sites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been the case, this often ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you plan to do any type of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by ensuring that your website is compliant with FTC guidelines and regulations.

You can find many online business resources that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. See our additional references and useful 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)

Don’t Forget Social Media Applications

If you are planning to develop apps that will integrate with your site, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others require you to provide access to your legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are not sure whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of service providers like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting products or services online using affiliate marketing, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, or use 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 all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts shut down.
• If you’ve ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business interests.

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

Common Legal Pages To Add To Your Website To Ensure Compliance

If you suspect that your website lacks in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.

At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your site should help keep your business out of trouble with most consumer protection agencies and 3rd-party providers, and even help you avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):

• About Us
• Contact Us
• Privacy Statement
• Terms And Conditions
• Website Disclaimer Pages
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

In addition to the pages above, you may want to consider implementing one or more of the pages listed below if applicable:

• Affiliate Agreement (if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides content about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Video/Audio Terms (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

It’s important to add correct disclosures to your site. For example:

• No Material Connection – Lets visitors know that you will not receive for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Notifies readers that you may receive compensation if they act on your recommendation and buy through your affiliate link.
• Sample/Review Copy – Lets site users know that you have received a review or sample copy of the product you’re writing about.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets visitors be aware that you have been compensated in some form to write the content.
• Third Party Advertising – Lets your visitors 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.

Adding Compliance Pages To Your WordPress Site

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

Upload Legal Web Pages Manually

If someone prepares and delivers the legal content for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload these pages for you.

We recommend creating a legals folder on your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder via FTP …

(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your web server and upload pages via FTP)

You can then add a link to these legal pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu admin area …

(WordPress Menu)

Displaying Legal Web Pages On Your Site

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and display clearly to all visitors. You can add these to the WordPress sidebar (or place them in the footer of your website) to ensure that visitors can access legal information from every web page …

(Display legal pages to visitors on all of your website’s pages)

If you need help displaying links to pages on your sidebar menu using widgets, refer to this tutorial:

• How To Add WordPress Widgets To The Blog

Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com)

Go here to learn more:

• Find Legal Forms – Attorney-prepared legal forms

Alternatively, you can purchase a package of website legal templates designed by legal attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Templates)

Cut & Paste website templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with search and replace to add your own business details, then pasted into your legal pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects FTC regulations that came into effect in 2012)
• Privacy Policy: Google, 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 every legal form you want to add to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload these to your web server as described previously.

Go here to learn more:

• Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

WordPress Legal Page Plugins

As well as using cut & paste templates, another option is to use plugins.

Here are some plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:

WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WP Legal Pages)

If you don’t want to bother with creating legal web pages manually, then consider using WP Legal Pages …

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 site and save you a great deal of time.

Here are just some of the benefits of using the WP Legal Pages plugin:

• Pre-written Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
• Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
• Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit legal pages like any WordPress page.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – Add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like every other page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page lock down. When users agree to your legal terms, the page unlocks.
• Additional Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will display inside your main dashboard menu …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings)

The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, niche sites, e-commerce sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages – Type of Site drop down menu)

You can also choose from a number of built-in legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – 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

Go here to learn more about using this handy plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin containing over 20 customizable compliance templates for your website …

Go here to learn more:

• Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)

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 powered site. You can have legal pages installed and set up on your site in less than one minute and the plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use the plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell).

Go here for more information:

• Legal Suite Pro

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

We want your business to be legally protected!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-written legal content, or plugins as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator allows you to quickly generate necessary legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

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As stated earlier, if you do business online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your site remains compliant with all government legal requirements and any guidelines and terms of service of 3rd-party sites that you may be promoting or using online. Your website must comply with numerous laws and regulatory guidelines, many 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?

Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice on this website. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.

Legal Resources

Below is a useful list of websites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your site may require to stay compliant and meet legal obligations:

• FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• FTC Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
• FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
• Better Business Bureau Website
• 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
• US 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

Hopefully, this article has helped you understand the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress website using inexpensive methods and resources.

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