Category: Website Planning

As a website owner, you do not want to learn the hard way that you have broken the law.

Online laws and regulations were designed to protect consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes goods or services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law will not prevent you from being slapped with a legal notice.

New laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for profit, then you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(BBB – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

These laws affect several online business categories, including:

• Any form of advertising, e.g. text link ads, Google Adsense, etc.
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creators
• Bloggers
• etc.

If your site does not display certain legal pages (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to list digital products, PayPal may suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend web applications, and you will not be allowed to participate in various advertising and affiliate merchant networks.

Plus, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.

The purpose of this guide is to help make you aware that your website(s) may be required to comply with certain legalities, the importance of complying with the terms of service of other providers whose products or services you may be using online, and that there are solutions for WordPress that can help your website become fully compliant, such as the plugins listed further below.

Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice on this website. As previously stated, this article is designed only to make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws and regulations governing business online and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose services or products you endorse on your website or blog

The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Are you at risk? Consider what the implications to your business would be if any of the scenarios below were to take place:

• A user suffers a heart attack after they use your online fitness workout.
• The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate gives people an allergic reaction.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you have not described exactly what you’ll do with the details you have collected.
• Someone steals content from your website and publishes it on their own site.
• There is no statement on your site making your site visitors aware that you are marketing a product as an affiliate and could earn a commission if they purchase it.
• You don’t spell out the terms and conditions of your refund policies.
• Visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are misleading and decide to sue you.
• You have not disclosed that you received a free copy in a product review.
• Your website includes adult information and you have not taken appropriate measures to restrict access by underage children.

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

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up their personal information (including credit card information to complete an offer they were promoting. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer received 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 information.
• 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% had breached at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had breached 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 cautions or lose access entirely to the Google program with the infringement, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how easy it is to be exposed to the risk of non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA Marketer
• MLM Networker
• Affiliate Product Promoter
• AdSense Publisher
• Niche Publisher
• Amazon Associate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
• Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product

It’s vitally important to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your online business stays legally compliant.

Compliance With Third-Party Companies Terms And Policies

Compliance 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 increases trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you will interact with.

For example:

Google requires you to display certain information if using many of their services and features. This includes using Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Earning revenue with your websites with Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense advertising - policy requirements)

Or promoting your products or services using Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you sell information products using places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will need to add certain legal pages to your site before they will approve your products for sale …

(Policy requirements product vendors selling via ClickBank)

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

(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Site Is Compliant

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many sites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As documented on their website, this will most likely prompt the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute website owners 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 chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by ensuring that your website complies with all FTC guidelines.

There are many resources websites for businesses that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. See the additional 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)

Social Media Apps Also Require Compliance

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

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure as to 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 assume that you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote services or products on your site as an affiliate marketer, or generate revenue with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or using Google AdWords pay-per-click ads to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to display on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts suspended.
• If you have been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to act now and take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business interests.

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

Basic Legal Pages To Add To Your Website

If you suspect that your website is lacking in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.

Adding the following legal pages to your site will help your business stay out of trouble with many regulatory agencies and third-party providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues):

• About Us
• Contact Page
• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Conditions
• Website Disclaimer Pages
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

As well as the above pages, you may want to look into implementing any of these pages if applicable:

• Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you sell or promote affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides general information about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Media Terms Of Use (if you allow media downloads on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

Adding the correct type of disclosure to your site is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Lets users know that you will not receive any form of payment for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Lets readers know that you may benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and purchase through affiliate links on your site.
• Sample/Review Copy – Disclosure that informs your visitors that you have received a sample or review copy of the product or service.
• Sponsored Post – Informs your visitors that you were 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 display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

How To Add Compliance Pages To Your Website

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

Upload Legal Web Pages To Your Website

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

We recommend creating a legal directory in your server and uploading your legal pages to this folder using FTP …

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

You can then easily add a link to these pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu feature …

(WordPress Menu)

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

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

To learn more about displaying links to pages on your sidebar or footer menu, refer to this tutorial:

• How To Add Widgets To WordPress

Ready-Made Legal Templates

You can easily find attorney-drafted disclosures and downloadable website forms and agreements by searching online, or by going to sites like the ones shown below:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms – Attorney-drafted legal forms)

For more details, visit this site:

• Find Legal Forms

Alternatively, you can download a package of legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Website Legal Pages)

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

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance
• Privacy Policy
• ToS & Conditions of Use.

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

Go here for more info:

• Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages

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

Here are some legal WordPress plugins that you may be interested in checking out:

WP Legal Pages

(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)

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

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

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

• Built-in Legal Templates – The plugin gives you access to 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 a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
• Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like every other WP page.
• Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
• 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 when users agree to your legal terms.
• Additional Features – More features are being added to this plugin with each new version.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will display inside your main navigation section …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings)

With WP Legal Pages, you have the option of easily creating legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites, affiliate sites, medical sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Create different legal pages)

Select from several built-in legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages – 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

To learn more about the benefits of using this WordPress plugin, visit this website:

• WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin that includes over twenty customizable legal templates for your site …

More info:

• Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress)

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 And Conditions
• 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 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 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).

To learn more, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro

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

We want your website to be safe!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or consider using one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-written legal content, or a WordPress legal pages plugin - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates basic legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you do business online, you need to ensure that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies and any guidelines and terms of service (TOS) of 3rd-party sites that you may decide to promote or recommend online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.

Non-compliance 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 provide no legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.

Additional Information

Below is a time-saving list of sites we recommend you visit to better understand what your business requires to remain 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
• Better Business Bureau
• 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

See Also …

• Google 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
• Google 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 the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your website.

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