Category: Website Planning

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

Online laws and regulations are designed to protect consumers and apply to anyone who sells, markets or promotes products and services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law won’t excuse someone from taking legal action against you.

New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for profit, you need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection 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)

The new laws affect various online business categories, including:

• Any type of advertising, like display advertising
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creation
• Bloggers
• etc.

If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to list digital products, PayPal may suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will reject your web applications, and you will not be allowed to enrol in various advertising or affiliate merchant networks.

If your digital presence is not in compliance, you could also end up facing a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

In this guide, we look at why it’s important to have a legally compliant website and how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your site.

Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?

Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice in this article. You must carry out your own due diligence and we recommend consulting a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all laws wherever your business is based.

Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Consider what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• A person has a heart attack after using your online fitness workout.
• The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate gives people skin rashes.
• You’ve informed subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not defined what you’ll do with it.
• Someone steals content from your website and puts it up on their own website.
• You haven’t advised your site users that you are an affiliate for the product you’re endorsing that you will receive a financial benefit if they purchase through your link.
• You don’t spell out the conditions of your return policies.
• Your visitors claim that your testimonials are fake and decide to sue you because of it.
• You did not disclose that you received a free copy of a product you reviewed.
• Your site contains adult information and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to keep underage children from accessing it.

Consider also these real examples of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up their personal information to complete an offer they were promoting. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer copped 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 Users IDs. Many 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 randomly-picked websites, more than 90% had broken 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% 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 with warnings 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 you could easily become exposed to the risk of non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA or PPA Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Promoter
• AdWords Advertiser
• Info Product Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Adult Content Publisher
• Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
• Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product

You need to ensure that your website has the right legal pages and information accessible to all you site users.

Compliance With Third-Party Companies Terms And Policies

Compliance with 3rd-party services terms and policies is important.

You are obligated to let your visitors know that your website complies with legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and confidence in your website, it’s also a requirement of many companies you do business with.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires websites to display legal information if using many of their services or product features. This includes using services like Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Generating revenue with your site using Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense ads policy requirements)

Or promoting your products through Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you sell information-based products with companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will need to add legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …

(Policy requirements for vendors selling via ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to display clear disclaimers and statements on your site, especially if you plan to use product testimonials or endorsements …

(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)

New FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Comply

FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many websites are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As is already the case, this typically results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting website owners 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 does not operate in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business interests by ensuring that your site is compliant with all FTC guidelines and regulations.

Many resources online provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. We provide references and links to additional resources to a number of these at the end of this article …

(Wording your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Don’t Forget Social Media Apps

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

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of companies like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting anything on your site via affiliate marketing, or making money online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay ads, or use Google AdWords 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 - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
• 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 third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use)

Essential Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Site To Ensure Compliance

If your website is lacking in aspects of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

Adding the following legal pages to your website should keep you out of trouble with most regulatory authorities and external providers, and even help you avoid potential legal issues):

• About Us Page
• Contact Page
• Privacy Statement
• Terms & Conditions
• Website Disclaimers
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

As well as the above pages, you may want to consider implementing one or more of these pages:

• Affiliate Agreement (if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website provides information about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Use Of Media (if you provide users with access to download videos or audio files on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

Adding the right web content disclosure information is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Discloses to users that you’re not receiving compensation for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Lets readers be aware that you may derive some form of financial benefit if they act on your recommendation and buy through your affiliate links.
• Review Or Sample Copy – Discloses to your readers that you have received a sample or review copy of the product.
• Sponsored Post – Discloses to visitors 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 satisfy the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring online publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Compliance Pages To Your Website

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

Upload Legal Pages Manually

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

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

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

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

(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)

Displaying Legal Pages On Your Site

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and clearly visible to all visitors. You can add these to the WordPress sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your website) so that users have access to the information from every web page …

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

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

• How To Add WordPress Widgets To The Sidebar

Using Ready-Made Templates

You can find downloadable attorney-prepared forms and agreements just by searching online, or going to websites like this one:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms – Legal forms)

To learn more, go here:

• FindLegalForms.com

Alternatively, you can purchase a package of website legal templates written by attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Form Templates)

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

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects new Federal Trade Commission regulations brought into effect in March 2012)
• Privacy Policy
• 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 pages and publish or upload these to your web server as previously described.

To learn more, go here:

• Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

Legal Page Plugins

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

Here are some plugins for WordPress-powered websites worth looking into:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)

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

WP Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s an affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will help make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site much easier and save you many headaches.

Some of the benefits of using WordPress Legal Pages plugin are:

• Pre-written Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
• Fully Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Editable Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit legal pages just like any page on your site.
• Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your pages 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. When users agree to the terms, the page unlocks.
• Additional Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will appear inside your navigation menu section …

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

This lets you create, view and edit legal pages from the admin area …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Screen)

The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites with products, review sites, medical sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Create different legal pages)

Select from several pre-configured legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – 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

Go here to learn more this plugin:

• WP Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-driven sites containing over twenty customizable compliance page templates for your website …

To learn more about this plugin go here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(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 & Conditions
• 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 powered site. Your legal pages can be installed and set up on your site in less than one minute and the plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites.

Go here for more info:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If hiring a lawyer to create your legal pages is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford to hire a solicitor.

We want your business to be protected!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal documents, or a WordPress legal pages plugin - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator Software allows you to quickly generate basic legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.

***

As stated earlier, if you do any kind of business online, you need to make sure that your site remains compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online and any terms of service (TOS) and guidelines for third-party services and products that you may decide to promote or endorse online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumers, 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, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website is compliant with the law concerning your specific business.

References And Resources

Below is a useful list of websites we suggest you visit to better understand what may be required of your site to remain compliant and meet 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
• United States Patent and Trademark Office
• US Copyright Office

Additionally …

• 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

Hopefully, this article has helped you understand the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add essential legal pages to your website or blog.

***