Category: Website Planning

One of the worst situations a website owner can find themselves in is to be on the wrong side of the law.

As the digital economy continues growing at such a rapid pace and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s vitally important to try and stay informed about what’s going on and ensure that your site remains compliant, especially if your digital presence is important in the success of your overall business strategy.

New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you promote anything on your site for material gain, then you need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the (US based) Better Business Bureau (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)

The new laws affect various business activities, including:

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

If your site does not display certain pages to visitors (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank will not allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal may suspend your account, Facebook could reject your web applications, and you will not be allowed to promote most advertising or affiliate merchant networks.

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

This article explains the importance of having a legally compliant website and how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress site using inexpensive resources and plugins.

Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice about your website or business. As stated earlier, this article is designed only to make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal policies in accordance with the laws and regulations governing business practices online and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of providers whose services or products you endorse on your website or blog

Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant

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

• A user has a heart attack after using your online workout program.
• The skin cream you promote as an affiliate gives someone who purchases from your link an adverse reaction.
• You’ve told your subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t described exactly what you plan to do with the details you have collected.
• Someone copies content from your website and publishes it on their own site.
• You did not tell your site visitors that you are endorsing a product as an affiliate and may derive a commission if visitors buy it.
• You did not spell out the terms and conditions of your refund and return policies.
• A visitor claims your testimonials are all fake and decides to sue you.
• You have not disclosed that you have received a free copy in your product review.
• Your site contains adult-related content and you did not take sufficient measures to restrict access by underage persons.

Consider also the documented case studies of costly compliance breaches listed below:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up their personal information (including credit card info to complete his offer. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, they’re now required to give everyone they do business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
• A social networking app developer was slapped with a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private details.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping Users IDs. Many 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-picked websites, more than 90% were in violation of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in breach of at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had infringed 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 they had infringed, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how you could be exposed to the risk of litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA (Cost Per Action) or CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Marketer
• AdWords User
• Info Product Marketer
• Amazon Associate
• EBay Seller
• Adult Content Publisher
• Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
• Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service

It’s vitally important to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your online business remains fully compliant with the law.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Companies Terms And Policies

Complying with 3rd-party companies terms and policies is important.

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

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires websites to display certain information if using many of their products or features. This includes using Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Generating revenue with your WordPress site using Google AdSense advertising …

(Google AdSense - policy requirements)

Or promoting your business via Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you sell digital products via companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you are required to add legal pages to your site before they will approve your products for sale in their marketplace …

(Policy requirements for selling digital products via ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to display clear disclaimers and statements to visitors, especially concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Be Compliant

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 still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As documented on their website, this often prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you 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. you should protect your business by ensuring that your site complies with FTC regulations.

Various online business resources provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. See the references and resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(Word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)

Don’t Forget Social Media Apps

If you plan to develop social networking applications that integrate with your site, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with access to various legal pages …

(Facebook apps also require compliance)

• If you are unsure whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of sites like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting products or services on your site as an affiliate marketer, or generate revenue with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or driving visitors to your site using Google AdWords, 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 - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
• If you have been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)

Common Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Site

If you suspect that your website or blog is falling short in aspects of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

Adding the following legal pages to your site will keep you out of trouble with most regulatory agencies and external providers, and avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):

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

As well as the above, you may want to consider adding one or more of these pages where applicable:

• Affiliate Disclosure (if you provide information about affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (if your website provides general financial content)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Use Of Media (e.g. if you allow users to download videos or audio files on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

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

• No Material Connection – Lets site users know that you’re not receiving any kind of compensation for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Disclosure that informs visitors that you will benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and buy through an affiliate link.
• Review Or Sample Copy – Lets readers know that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product or service you’re writing about.
• Sponsored Post – Informs site users that you have been compensated in some form to write the content.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs readers 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 Legal Content To Your WordPress Website

Ideally, you will have your lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once these have been done, there are several ways to include them in your website.

Upload Legal Pages Manually To Your Website

If someone prepares the legal content for you in standard web page format (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload them for you.

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

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

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

(WordPress Menu)

Where To Display Legal Pages On Your Site

Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and clearly visible to your visitors. You can add these to your WordPress sidebar (or place them in the footer of your site) to ensure that visitors can access legal information from every page …

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

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial about displaying links to pages on your sidebar menu, refer to this tutorial:

• How To Add And Configure Widgets In WordPress

Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com)

More information:

• Find Legal Forms – Legal forms

Another option is to purchase a package of cut & paste legal templates written by legal attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages)

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

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects new FTC regulations and guidelines that came into effect in 2012)
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use.

You can either create a new WordPress page for every legal form you want added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your server as described earlier.

For more details, visit this website:

• Website Legal Pages

Legal Page Plugins

In addition to using legal templates, another option for adding legal pages to your site is to use a plugin.

Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress-powered websites and blogs worth looking into:

WordPress Legal Pages

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin)

If the idea of manually creating legal pages for your site seems too time-consuming for you, then consider choosing WP Legal Pages …

This is not a free plugin, but it’s a reasonably affordable 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 reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages plugin:

• Pre-written Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
• Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the basic legal pages you will need in around 3 minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
• Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any page on your site.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your pages when published.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any WordPress page.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. When users agree to the legal terms, the page unlocks.
• Additional Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature is added to your navigation area …

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

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

(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page Type)

Select from a number of pre-configured legal templates …

(WP 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

Visit the plugin website to learn more about using this plugin:

• WP Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

The Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your online business …

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

• Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro)

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 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 plugin licensing is flexible, allowing you to install and use the plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).

Go here to learn more:

• Legal Suite Pro

If hiring a lawyer to create your legal pages is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic kind of legal protection on your site until you can afford to hire the services of a legal form or lawyer.

We want your business to be protected!

Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (for FREE!), or use 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 allows you to easily generate essential legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.

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As stated earlier, if you engage in any form of business online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your site is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) required by 3rd-party products and services that you may decide to promote or endorse online. Your website or blog must comply with numerous 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?

Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice in this article. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements pertaining to your business.

Additional Information

Below is a time-saving list of sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your site may require to comply and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:

• FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• FTC Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
• FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
• BBB – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program
• 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
• United States 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
• 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 compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress site.

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