Category: Website Planning

One of the worst things that can happen to a business owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.

Internet laws and regulations are designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to any person who sells, markets or promotes products or services online. Every website owner 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, you will need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the Better Business Bureau, also referred to as the BBB. Search online for information about “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(BBB – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

The introduction of these new laws affect several business categories, including:

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

If your website does not display certain pages to visitors (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to list digital products on their network, PayPal may suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will reject your applications, and you won’t be allowed to enroll in most advertising and affiliate merchant networks.

If your online business is not compliant, you could also face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

The purpose of this article is to make you aware that your website are required to comply with legal requirements, the importance of complying with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose services or products you may be selling on your website, and that there are easy solutions that can help your websites become compliant, such as the tools discussed further below.

Is Your Website Breaking Rules Or Regulations?

Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements pertaining to your business.

Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important

Are you at risk? Consider for a minute what the implications to your business would be if these situations were to happen:

• A user suffers a heart attack after using your online workout program.
• The skin care products you sell as an affiliate gives a number of users an allergic reaction.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you have not informed them exactly what you plan to do with it.
• Someone copies your content and puts it up on their website.
• There is no statement on your website making your visitors aware that you are promoting a product as an affiliate that you may get paid financial benefits if they purchase it.
• You did not spell out the terms and conditions of your refund policies.
• Your visitors claim the testimonials on your site are misleading and decide to sue you because of it.
• You didn’t disclose that you received a free copy in your product review.
• Your website publishes adult information and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to keep underaged persons from accessing it.

Consider too these actual 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 to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer received a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing private details about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
• An independently-conducted 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% were breaking 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 cautions or lose access entirely 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 become exposed to the risk of litigation?

Regardless of whether you are a:

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

It’s vitally important to make sure that your website or blog stays fully compliant with the law.

Compliance With Third-Party Companies - ToS, Policies, etc.

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

You are expected to let your site users know that your business complies with all necessary laws and recommended guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of many companies you interact with.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires you to display certain information if using their products and service. This includes Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Making money online with your blogs using Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense policy requirements)

And even promoting your services through Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to sell information products via companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you are required to add legal pages before your products are approved for sale in their marketplace …

(ClickBank – policy requirements)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to include clear disclaimers and policy statements on your website, especially when concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Site Is Compliant

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many sites are 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 in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you plan to do any kind of business 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 complies with all FTC regulations.

Various business resources provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. See the resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(You must word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Don’t Forget Social Media Apps

If you are planning to develop apps that integrate with your site, sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others will require you to provide information about your legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure as to whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote anything online as an affiliate marketer, or generating revenue with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or driving visitors to your website using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to provide on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts shut down.
• If you’ve been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use)

What Compliance Information Does Your Website Need To Be Legally Compliant?

If your website or blog falls short in aspects of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

Adding the following compliance pages to your website will help your business keep out of trouble with many regulatory authorities and external providers, and avoid potential legal issues):

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

In addition to the above, you may want to consider including any of these pages if applicable:

• 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 advice about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Video/Audio Terms (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

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

• No Material Connection – Informs your visitors that you are not being paid for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Lets users know that you may be compensated if they purchase through your affiliate link.
• Review Or Sample Copy – Discloses to your readers that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product by the author or developer.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs site users that you have been compensated in some form to write the content.
• Third Party Advertising – Lets your visitors know that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to comply with the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring online publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

How To Add Compliance Pages To Your WordPress Site

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

Upload Legal Web Pages Manually

If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you as standard web pages (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 web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder using FTP …

(Upload legal pages to your web server via FTP)

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

(WordPress Menu)

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and clearly visible to all site visitors. You can add these to your sidebar (or place them in the footer of your site) so that visitors have access to legal information from all of your site’s pages …

(It’s important to display legal pages to users on all of your site’s pages)

We have written a detailed tutorial on adding links to pages on your sidebar and footer in WordPress using widgets here:

• How To Add And Configure Widgets In WordPress

Legal Templates

You can find attorney-prepared downloadable forms and agreements just by searching online, or going to websites like the ones shown below:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

More info:

• FindLegalForms.com

Alternatively, you can download a package of cut & paste website legal templates created by legal attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages)

These legal pages were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with a quick search and replace to add your own details, then pasted into your pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects new FTC guidelines that came into effect on March 2012)
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.

You can either create a new page on your website 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 the pages to your web server as described earlier.

More information:

• Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates

Legal Page Plugins

In addition to using templates, you can keep things very simple by using WordPress plugins.

Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress-driven sites that you should check out:

WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WordPress Legal Pages)

If manually creating legal pages for your website seems too time-consuming for you, then consider installing a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages …

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

Some of the benefits of using WordPress Legal Pages are:

• Pre-written Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the basic legal pages you will need in around 3 minutes with a few mouse clicks.
• Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like any page on your website.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – 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 checkbox and delete and manage these like any page on your site.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. When a user agrees to your legal terms, the page unlocks.
• Additional Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will appear inside your navigation section …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Area)

You can create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, affiliate sites, medical sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Create different legal pages)

Select from various built-in legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Pre-configured 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 this great plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin with over twenty customizable legal pages for your site …

Go here to learn more about the plugin:

• Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress)

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 Use
• 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 site. Your legal pages can be installed and set up on your site in one minute or less 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

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

We want your website to be legally safe!

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 documentation, or plugins as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator lets you easily generate 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 make money online (or are planning to), you need to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines for 3rd-party services and products that you may be promoting or endorsing online. Your internet presence must comply with various laws and regulatory guidelines, many of which you may not even be aware of.

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 do not offer legal advice. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website fully complies with the law concerning your specific business.

Resources

Here is a useful list of additional sites we suggest you visit to better understand what your business requires to stay compliant and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:

• 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
• US Patent and Trademark Office
• US Copyright Office

Also …

• 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
• 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 above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your website or blog using simple and inexpensive resources and solutions.

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