Category: Website Planning

Is your WordPress website legally compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any laws, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose products or services you recommend or offer?

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

Recent laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for material gain, you need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the US-based 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.

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

The new laws has legal consequences for several online business categories, including:

• Any type of advertising, including contextual ads
• 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 of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to list digital products, PayPal may suspend your account, Facebook could suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote various advertising and online merchant networks.

If your online presence is not in compliance, you could also face a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

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

Is Your Website Compliant?

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice on this website. As previously stated, this article is designed only to make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with the laws and regulations that govern online business practices and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of providers whose products or services you recommend

Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important

Consider for one moment what would happen to your business if any of the following were to happen:

• Someone has a heart attack after they use your online fitness workout.
• The skin care lotion you promote as an affiliate marketer gives people skin rashes.
• Your opt-in list provides a statement informing subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t spelled out exactly what you’ll do with it.
• Someone copies your content and puts it up on their website.
• There is no statement on your website or blog letting your site visitors know that you are recommending a product as an affiliate and could receive financial benefits if they buy via your affiliate link.
• You haven’t spelled out the conditions of your refund policies.
• Online visitors claim the testimonials on your site are all fake and try to sue you because of it.
• You haven’t disclosed in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
• Your site contains adult content and you didn’t take appropriate measures to keep underaged persons from accessing it.

Consider now the real examples of costly compliance breaches below:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up personal information to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
• 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 does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
• An independent 2010 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% were in violation of at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had breached at least three 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 violated, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how you could easily be exposed to the risks of non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Marketer
• AdWords Advertiser
• Info Product Marketer
• Amazon Affiliate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
• Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online

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

Complying With 3rd-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.

Compliance with third-party companies terms and policies is important.

You are expected to let your site visitors know that your business complies will all laws and recommended guidelines. This not only improves trust and confidence in your business, it’s also a requirement of most companies you will do business with online.

For example:

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

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Monetizing your WordPress sites with Google AdSense display advertising …

(Google AdSense online advertising - policy requirements)

Or promoting your products or services via Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to sell products online with places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you are required to add legal pages before they will approve your products for sale in their network …

(ClickBank – policy requirements for digital product vendors)

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to display clear disclaimers and policies to visitors, especially if you plan to use product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Website Is Compliant

FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many business are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As is already the case, this often 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 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. you should protect your business by ensuring that your site is compliant with FTC regulations.

You can find many online business resources that can provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. See the 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 Have Compliance Requirements

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

(Social networking apps also require compliance)

• If you are unsure whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting services or products on your site using affiliate marketing, or monetizing your pages with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or driving visitors to your website with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to provide on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts shut down.
• If you have ever wondered 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 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies)

Basic Legal Pages To Add To Your Website To Ensure Compliance

If your web site is lacking in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

Adding the following compliance pages to your site will help keep your business out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and third-party service providers, and avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):

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

In addition to the above, you may want to consider adding one or more of the following pages:

• Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you sell or promote affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides advice about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Video/Audio Terms (if you provide users with access to 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 are not being paid for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Informs site users that you may derive some form of financial or similar type of benefit if they purchase through your affiliate links.
• Review Or Sample Copy – Explains to site users that you have received a sample or review copy of the product or service you’re reviewing.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets your visitors know that you were compensated in some form to write the post.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs users 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.

Adding Legal Pages Content To Your WordPress Website

Ideally, you will have a lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this completed, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Upload Legal Pages Manually

If someone prepares the legal content for you in typical 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 folder on your server and uploading your legal pages to this folder using FTP …

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

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

(Custom WordPress Menu)

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

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

If you need help adding links to pages on your sidebar, see this tutorial:

• Adding And Configuring WordPress Widgets In Your Website

Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com – Legal forms)

More information:

• Find Legal Forms

Another option is to download a package of cut & paste website legal templates drafted by legal attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Pages)

These templates were written by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with search and replace to add your own business name and URL, then pasted into your web pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance
• Privacy Policy
• 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 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 your legal pages to your server as described previously.

Go here to learn more:

• Website Legal Pages

Legal Pages – Plugins

In addition to using copy & paste legal templates, you can simplify things using plugins.

Here are some plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)

If manually creating legal pages for your website feels too time-consuming for you, then consider using WordPress Legal Pages instead …

This is not a free plugin, but it’s an affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you loads of headaches.

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

• Pre-written Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
• Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the legal pages you need in around 3 minutes with a few mouse clicks.
• Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit all legal pages like any other page on your site.
• Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like every other WP page.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed only when the user agrees to your terms.
• New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.

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

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

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Screen)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page Type)

You can also choose from several pre-written legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Pre-configured 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 the benefits of using this WordPress plugin, visit the plugin site:

• WP Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin with over twenty customizable compliance page templates for your online business …

Learn We’ve written a detailed article about this plugin here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro 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 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. 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 the plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell).

More info:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If using the services of a lawyer to create your legal pages is out of your budget, then at least consider implementing some type of legal protection on your site until you can afford professional assistance.

We want your website to be legally protected!

Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (it’s FREE!), or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal documentation, or a WordPress legal pages plugin as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator allows you to easily generate basic legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you are making money online, you need to make sure that your site stays compliant with all government regulations and any guidelines and terms of service (TOS) provided by third-party services and products that you may be promoting or advertising online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect the rights of 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?

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

Legal Information

Below is a time-saving list of sites we suggest you visit to better understand what your business requires to remain compliant and meet its legal obligations:

• FTC 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
• 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

In Addition …

• 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 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 all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website or blog.

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