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.

Internet laws and regulations were designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to anyone who sells, markets or promotes products and services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law won’t excuse someone from taking legal action against you.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for commercial gain, then you will 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). Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

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

These laws has legal consequences for several online business activities, including:

• Any form of advertising, e.g. display advertising
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creation
• Blogging
• etc.

If your site does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t allow you to list digital products, PayPal could suspend your account, Facebook could reject your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote a range of advertising or affiliate merchant networks.

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

The purpose of this article is to make you aware that your site(s) are subject to certain legal requirements, the importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose services or products you may be offering on your website, and that there are easy solutions that can help your site become fully compliant, such as the tools that we discuss further below.

Is Your Website Legally Compliant?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice about your website or business. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all laws and regulations in your country or region.

Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important

Is your business at risk? Consider for a minute what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• Someone has a heart attack after using your online fitness workout.
• The skin care lotion you promote as an affiliate marketer gives someone who purchases from your link allergic reactions.
• You’ve told your subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not clearly spelled out what you plan to do with their personal details.
• Someone copies your content and publishes it on their own site.
• There is no statement on your website or blog letting visitors know that you are an affiliate for the product you’re selling that you may derive financial benefits if they buy it.
• You did not spell out the terms and conditions of your refund/return policies.
• Your visitors claim the testimonials on your site are false and decide to sue you.
• You didn’t disclose in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your website contains adult-related content and you didn’t take appropriate measures to restrict access by underage persons.

Consider also 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 personal information (including credit card information to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer received a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private information about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes Users IDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of dollars 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% had infringed at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had breached 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 with warnings or lose access entirely to the Google program whose policies with the infringement, 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 Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Marketer
• AdSense Publisher
• Product Marketer
• Amazon Associate
• EBay Seller
• Adult Content Publisher
• Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
• Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service

You need to make sure that your digital presence stays legally compliant.

Compliance With Third-Party Services Terms And Policies

Complying with 3rd-party companies terms and policies is important.

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

For example:

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

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Earning revenue online with your WordPress blog using Google AdSense display advertising …

(Google AdSense display advertising - policy requirements)

And even promoting your products or services via Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you sell information products through companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you are required to add various legal pages to your website before they will approve your products for sale in their networks …

(Policy requirements for selling digital products via ClickBank)

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

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Be Compliant

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many websites are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this typically 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 type of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by making sure that your site complies with FTC guidelines and regulations.

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

(It’s important to word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)

Don’t Forget Social Media Applications

If you are planning to create applications that will integrate with your website, sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others will require you to provide access to various 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 organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting services or products on your site as an affiliate marketer, or generating revenue online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay ads, 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 - don’t risk having your accounts shut down.
• If you have been wondering whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, 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 terms of use and policies)

Common Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Website

If you suspect that your website lacks in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.

Adding the following legal pages to your site will help you stay out of trouble with most regulatory agencies and 3rd-party providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “takedown” notices):

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

Additionally, you may want to look into including one or more of the following pages:

• Affiliate Disclosure (if you provide information about affiliate products or services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Linking Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (if your website provides general financial information)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Use Of Media (e.g. if you allow users to download videos or audio files on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

It’s important to add the right disclosures to your website. For example:

• No Material Connection – Informs site users that you are not being paid for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Lets your visitors know that you may be compensated if they act on your recommendation and buy through one of your affiliate links.
• Sample/Review Copy – Lets your readers know that you have received a review or sample copy of the product by the author or developer.
• Sponsored Post – Lets your visitors know that you have been compensated in some form to write the content.
• Third Party Advertising – Lets readers 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 website publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

How To Add Compliance Pages To Your Site

Ideally, you should consult a lawyer or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once these have been done, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Uploading Legal Pages To Your Website

If someone prepares the legal content for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload these pages for you.

We recommend creating a legals directory on your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory (e.g. using FTP) …

(Upload legal pages to your server using 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 fully up-to-date and display clearly to visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into the sidebar menu (or place them in the footer of your site) so that users have access to the information from all pages …

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

We have created a detailed tutorial on displaying links to pages on your sidebar or footer in WordPress using widgets here:

• Configuring Widgets On Your Sidebar

Templates

You can find downloadable attorney-drafted internet forms and agreements by searching online, or by visiting sites like the ones listed below:

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com – Attorney-drafted legal forms)

To learn more, go here:

• Find Legal Forms

Alternatively, you can download a set of cut & paste legal templates drafted by legal attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s 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 details, then pasted into your pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects FTC regulations and guidelines brought into effect on March 2012)
• Privacy Policy: Google, DART, etc.
• ToS & Conditions of Use.

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

For more information, visit this website:

• Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

Legal Pages – Plugins

As well as using legal templates, another option is to use a plugin.

Here are some legal WordPress plugins you may be interested in using:

WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)

If you don’t want to bother with creating legal web pages manually, then consider using WordPress Legal Pages instead …

WordPress Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a very low-priced and well-supported plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you loads of headaches.

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

• Built-in Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
• Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the basic legal pages you will need in around 3 minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
• Fully Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Editable Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages just like every other WP page.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – Add shortcodes to 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 any WP page.
• Forced Options – Force page lockdown. When a user agrees to the terms, the page unlocks.
• Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.

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

(WordPress Legal Pages – Menu)

This allows you to view, create and edit your 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, review websites, Amazon sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Create different legal pages)

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

(WP Legal Pages – 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:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your site …

Go here to learn more about this plugin:

• Compliance Bar – WP Website Compliance Plugin

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro For WordPress)

Legal Suite Pro 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 – 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 plugin licensing is flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your websites.

More info:

• Legal Suite Pro

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

We want your website to be legally protected!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or consider using 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 Software)

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

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As stated earlier, if you engage in any form of commercial activity online, it’s important that your website stays compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines for 3rd-party sites that you may decide to promote or offer online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended 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?

Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot 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 pertaining to your business.

Resources

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

• Federal Trade Commission 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 – BBB
• 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 …

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

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