Category: Website Planning

As a business owner, the last thing you want to do is to find yourself breaking rules or regulations.

Internet laws, regulations, and guidelines are designed to protect consumers and apply to any person who sells, markets or promotes goods and services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements will not protect someone from taking legal action against you.

Recent 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). Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

These laws affect various online business categories, including:

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

If you do not display certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to sell digital products, PayPal may close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend web applications, and you will not be allowed into a number of advertising and online merchant networks.

You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.

In this article, we look at the importance of having a legally compliant website and explain simple solutions that will help make your WordPress website legally compliant in minutes.

Is Your Website Legally Compliant?

Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice on this website. As stated above, the purpose of this article is only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with the laws and regulations governing business and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of 3rd-party companies whose services or products you recommend on your website

Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important

Is your business at risk? Consider what could happen to your business if the following were to happen:

• A person has a heart attack after they use your online fitness workout.
• The skin cream you promote as an affiliate gives someone who purchases from your link allergic reactions.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you have not spelled out exactly what you will do with it.
• Someone steals your content and publishes it on their own website.
• There is no statement on your site letting visitors know that you are an affiliate for the product you are recommending and could derive a commission if visitors buy it.
• You didn’t spell out the conditions of your refund policies.
• Online visitors claim your testimonials are fake and try to sue you.
• You didn’t disclose in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your website publishes adult-related content and you didn’t take sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged persons.

Consider also these documented case studies of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up personal information to complete his offer. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, they’re now required to provide 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 massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private information.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
• An independent 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had broken at least two 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 cautions or lose access to the Google program with the violation, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how easy it is to become exposed to the risks of litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA (Cost Per Action) Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Product Marketer
• AdSense Publisher
• Info Product Marketer
• Amazon Affiliate
• EBay Seller
• Adult Content Publisher
• Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
• Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online

it’s important to make sure that your digital presence is legally compliant.

Compliance With Third-Party Companies

Leading online companies and government regulatory agencies emphasize the need and importance of complying with the terms and policies of third-party service providers.

You are expected to let your site users know that your website complies will all laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and confidence in your site, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you will do business with online.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires websites to display certain information if using their products and features. This includes using features like Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Earning revenue with your blog using Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense online advertising policy requirements)

And even promoting your products or services via Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to sell information products using merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you will be required to add a number of legal pages to your site before they will approve your products for sale in their marketplace …

(Policy requirements for ClickBank product vendors)

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

(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many websites are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As documented on their website, this typically results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting companies for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you plan to do any kind of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business by ensuring that your site is compliant with all FTC guidelines and regulations.

There are many sites that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. See our additional resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(Wording your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of the law)

Social Media Apps - Don’t Forget These

If you plan to create apps that will integrate with your site, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others will require you to provide information about various legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure whether or not you may be 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 products or services online via affiliate marketing, or generate revenue with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or driving visitors to your website using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to include on your site to comply with all 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, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.

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

What Compliance Information Pages Does My Website Need To Be Legally Compliant?

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

At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your website will help your website keep out of trouble with most regulatory authorities and third-party providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues):

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

As well as the above pages, you may want to look into implementing one or more of the pages listed below if applicable:

• Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you provide information about affiliate products or services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides general content about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Audio/Video Terms Of Use (if you allow media downloads on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

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

• No Material Connection – This lets readers be aware that you’re not receiving any kind of compensation for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Disclosure that informs your visitors that you will derive some form of financial or similar type of benefit if they buy through one of your affiliate links.
• Sample Or review Copy – Lets users be aware that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product or service you’re reviewing by the author or developer.
• Sponsored Post – Lets your visitors know that you have been compensated in some form to write the content.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs your 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 Pages To Your WordPress Site

Ideally, you will consult your lawyer and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once this has been completed, there are several ways to include them in your website.

Upload Legal Pages Manually

If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you in HTML format, 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 via FTP …

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

You can then add a link to these legal pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …

(Custom WordPress Menu)

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are fully up-to-date and clearly accessible to all site visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into your WordPress sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your site) so that visitors have access to legal information from all pages …

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

We have written a detailed tutorial about displaying links to pages on your WP sidebar or footer here:

• Adding And Configuring WordPress Widgets In The Website

Legal Templates

You can find downloadable attorney-prepared internet forms and agreements by searching online, or visiting sites like the ones shown below:

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com)

For more details, go here:

• Find Legal Forms

Another option is to download 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 – Website Legal Pages)

Cut & Paste website templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a quick search and replace to add your own business name and URL, then pasted into your legal 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: Google, etc.
• Terms of Service & 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 page on your website for each legal form you want added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload these to your server as previously described.

More information:

• Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

Legal Pages – WordPress Plugins

In addition to using copy & paste legal templates, you can keep things really simple using a plugin.

Here are some great WordPress plugins worth looking into:

WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

If you don’t want to spend time creating legal web pages manually, then consider installing a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages …

This plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will help make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your site a lot easier and save you time.

Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages plugin:

• Built-in Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
• Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the basic legal pages you will need in a few minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
• Fully Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – Content editor lets you edit legal pages just like any page on your website.
• Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any other page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. When users agree to the legal 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 new menu item will display inside your navigation section …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings)

You have the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, review websites, Amazon sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Page Type)

Choose from several pre-written legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – 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

To learn more about using this great plugin, go here:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-powered sites that contains over twenty customizable legal templates for your web presence …

More info:

• Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin

Legal Suite Pro

(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 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 have packaged high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers into a plugin that can be installed quickly on any WordPress site. Your legal pages can be 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.

For more details, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If using the services of lawyers to create your legal pages is out of your budget, consider implementing some basic type of legal protection on your website until you can afford a solicitor.

We want your site to be protected!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or consider choosing 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 lets you easily 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 engage in any form of business online (or are planning to), you need to ensure that your website remains compliant with government regulations and the terms of service and guidelines for third-party products and services that you may decide to promote or use online. Your internet presence must comply with various 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?

Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on this website. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements in your country or region.

Additional Information

Here is a useful list of websites we suggest you visit to better understand what may be required of your website to remain compliant and meet legal requirements and guidelines:

• Federal Trade Commission 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
• 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
• 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 why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add essential legal pages to your WordPress website.

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