One of the worst things that can happen to you as a business owner is to break the law.
As the digital era continues to grow at an overwhelming speed and the rules constantly change, it’s absolutely essential to try and stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains compliant, especially if having an online presence is important in the success of your overall business strategy.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you promote anything on your website for profit, then you need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the Better Business Bureau (BBB). Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – BBB)
These laws has ramifications for several business activities, including:
- Any kind of advertising, like Google AdWords
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t allow you to list digital products, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will disapprove web applications, and you will not be allowed into a number of advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
More importantly, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
This article explains why it’s important to have a compliant website and how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress site using simple legal resources and solutions.
Is Your Site Breaking The Law?
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website. As previously stated, this article is designed only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with federal, regional or local laws and regulations governing your business and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of providers whose products or services you recommend
Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant
Consider what would happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- A customer suffers a heart attack after using your online fitness workout.
- The skin care products you promote as an affiliate gives someone who purchases from your link an adverse reaction.
- Your opt-in list displays a statement informing prospective subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you have not clearly spelled out what you will do with the details you have collected.
- Someone copies your content and publishes it on their own site.
- You did not tell your site users that you are promoting a product as an affiliate that you could earn a financial benefit if they buy it.
- You haven’t spelled out the terms and conditions of your refund or return policies.
- Someone claims the testimonials on your site are misleading and decides to sue you because of it.
- You did not disclose in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
- Your website includes adult content and you did not take sufficient measures to keep underage children from accessing it.
Consider now these documented case studies of costly compliance breaches:
- 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 his offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer copped a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing private information about children.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping Users IDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independent study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% were in breach of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had broken 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 whose policies with the violation, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how a website owner can easily become exposed to the risks of litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA (Cost Per Action) Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Promoter
- AdWords Advertiser
- Info Product Publisher
- Amazon Associate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online
You need to make sure that your digital presence has the right legal pages and clearly displayed to all you site visitors.
Compliance With Third-Party Companies - ToS, Policies, etc.
Big companies and government regulatory agencies emphasize the need and importance of complying with the terms and policies of service providers.
You must let your visitors know that your website complies will all legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only improves trust and confidence in your website, it’s also a requirement of most companies you do business with online.
Here are just some examples:
Google requires websites to display legal information if using many of their services or product features. This includes using features such as Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Making money online with your blogs with Google AdSense ads …
(Google AdSense - policy requirements)
And even promoting your products or services using Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you plan to sell digital products through companies like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will need to add a number of legal pages before they will approve your products for selling via their networks …
(ClickBank – policy requirements for digital product vendors)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you add clear disclaimers and policies to visitors, especially if you plan to use testimonials or product endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant
FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many sites are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As is already the case, this typically ends up with 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 money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. you should protect your business interests by ensuring that your website is compliant with all FTC regulations and guidelines.
There are many online business resources that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. See the additional references and resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(You must structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Don’t Forget Social Media Apps
If you are planning to create social networking applications that integrate with your site, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others with information about your legal pages …
(Facebook apps also require compliance)
- If you are unsure as to whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting services or products online using affiliate marketing, or generating revenue with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or use Google AdWords pay-per-click ads to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to display on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts shut down.
- If you have ever wondered whether “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, most third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use)
What Compliance Information Pages Do You Need To Add To Your Website To Be Legally Compliant?
If you suspect that your web site lacks in aspects of compliance, then this section will help you.
Adding the following compliance pages to your website will help you keep out of trouble with most regulatory authorities and 3rd-party providers, and even help to avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the pages above, you may want to look into implementing one or more of the pages listed below:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you sell or promote affiliate products or services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Health Disclaimers (if your website provides general information about health or medical areas)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Video/Audio Terms (e.g. if you allow users to download videos or audio files on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
Adding the right web content disclosure information is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Lets users be aware that you will not receive any form of compensation for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Lets visitors be aware that you will receive compensation if they act on your recommendation and purchase through your affiliate links.
- Review Or Sample Copy – Lets your visitors know that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product or service you’re reviewing or writing about.
- Sponsored Post – Lets your visitors be aware that you have been compensated in some way to write the article.
- 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 website publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
Adding Legal Content To Your WordPress Website
Ideally, you will consult lawyers and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this prepared, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Uploading Legal Pages Manually
If someone prepares and delivers the legal content for you in typical web page format (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend creating a legals folder on your server and uploading your legal pages to this directory (e.g. using FTP) …
(Upload legal pages to your server via FTP)
You can then add links to these legal pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and clearly accessible to visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your sidebar menu (or the footer of your website) to ensure that visitors have access to legal information from all your pages …
(Display links to your legal pages on all of your website’s pages)
We have written a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your sidebar and footer in WordPress here:
Legal Templates
You can find downloadable attorney-prepared internet forms and agreements just by searching online, or by visiting sites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
(FindLegalForms.com – Attorney-prepared legal forms)
Go here to learn more:
Alternatively, you can purchase a set of cut & paste website legal templates written by attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)
Cut & Paste website legal templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a quick search and replace to add your own details, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Templates 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 March 2012)
- Privacy Policy: Google & DoubleClick DART, etc.
- Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new WordPress page for every legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload these to your server as previously described.
More info:
Plugins – Legal Pages
In addition to using cut & paste templates, you can keep things really simple using a plugin.
Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress users that you may be interested in checking out:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)
If setting up legal pages manually seems too time-consuming for you, then consider using WordPress Legal Pages instead …
WP Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a low-priced and well-supported premium plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you a great deal of time and effort.
Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages plugin:
- Built-in Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the legal pages you need in a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Editable Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like any WordPress page.
- Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any other WP page.
- Forced Options – Force page lock down. Page unlocks when users agree to your legal terms.
- Additional Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature will display inside your WordPress dashboard menu section …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)
This lets you create, edit and view legal pages from the admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Area)
You can easily create legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites, review websites, e-commerce sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page Type)
Select from several built-in legal templates …
(WordPress 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 plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
total website compliance & disclaimer solution …
Learn We’ve written an in-depth article about this plugin here:
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 & Conditions
- 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. You can have legal pages 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 sites.
Go here to learn more:
If using the services of lawyers to create your legal documentation is currently out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic form of legal protection on your site until you can afford professional assistance.
We want your business to be legally safe!
Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (it’s FREE!), or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal documentation, or plugins - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator allows you to easily generate necessary 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, it’s important that your site complies with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done and the guidelines and terms of service for third-party sites that you may decide to promote or use online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
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 do not provide legal advice in this article. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law concerning your specific business.
Resources
Here is a useful list of sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your site 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
- 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
- United States Patent and Trademark Office
- US Copyright Office
And …
- Google 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 this article has helped you understand the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress site using simple and inexpensive solutions.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)