Is your website legally compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking any laws, rules or regulations, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any companies whose services or products you are promoting or using?
Internet laws and regulations are designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to any person who markets, sells or promotes products and services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law will not protect you from being slapped with a legal notice.
New 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 material gain, then 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 (BBB). Search online for information about “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Better Business Bureau – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The new laws has legal consequences for several business activities, including:
- Any type of advertising, including Google AdWords
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creators
- Blogging
- etc.
If your site does not display certain pages to visitors (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to list digital products, PayPal may suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your web applications, and you will not be allowed to promote a number of advertising or online marketing networks.
If your online business is not in compliance, you could face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
This guide explains the importance of having a legally compliant website and lists simple and cost-effective solutions that will help make your website or blog compliant in minutes.
Is Your Site Breaking The Law?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law pertaining to your business.
Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important
Consider what the implications to your business would be if the scenarios below were to happen:
- A customer suffers a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online fitness workout.
- The skin care creams you promote as an affiliate marketer gives a number of users allergic reactions.
- You’ve told your subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you have not clearly spelled out what you’ll do with their personal details.
- Someone copies your content and publishes it on their site.
- You haven’t advised your site users that you’re an affiliate for the product you’re promoting that you may get paid a sales commission if they end up buying via your affiliate link.
- You don’t spell out the terms of your refund policies.
- A visitor claims your testimonials are all fake and tries to sue you as a result.
- You have not disclosed in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
- Your site includes adult-related content and you didn’t take sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged children.
Consider too these real examples 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 details to complete a debt reduction offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer was slapped with 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 prohibits using software that scrapes UIDs. Many marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independent 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had breached 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 with warnings or lose access entirely to the Google program 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 risks of litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Marketer
- AdWords User
- Niche Marketer
- Amazon Affiliate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
- Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product
It’s vitally important to ensure that your website or blog complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Compliance With Third-Party Companies - ToS, Policies, etc.
Compliance with third-party services terms and policies is important.
You must let your visitors know that your business complies with legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only improves trust and confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of many companies you do business with.
For example:
Google requires your site to display certain information if using many of their products. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Generating revenue online with your site with Google AdSense online advertising …
(Google AdSense ads policy requirements)
And even promoting your business through Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you plan to sell information products via merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you are required to add a number of legal pages to your site before your products can be approved for selling via their marketplace …
(Policy requirements digital product vendors selling through ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you display clear disclaimers and disclosures on your website, especially concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Site Is Compliant
FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many websites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been 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 do any type of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by ensuring that your site is compliant with all FTC guidelines.
You can find many online business resources that can provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. We provide additional references to some of these at the end of this article …
(It’s important to 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 apps that integrate with your website, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others with information about various legal pages …
(Apps for social networking sites also require compliance)
- If you are unsure as to whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote services or products online as an affiliate marketer, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay advertising, or driving visitors to your website with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to include on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts shut down.
- If you’ve ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)
What Legal Information Do I Need To Add To My Site To Be Protected From Legal Compliance Issues?
If you suspect that your website or blog is lacking in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.
Adding the following legal pages to your website should help keep you out of trouble with many consumer protection agencies and 3rd-party service providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us Page
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to look into adding one or more of these pages:
- Affiliate Agreement (if you provide an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Links Policy
- Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides general health or medical content)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Audio/Video Terms Of Use (e.g. if you allow users to download media on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding the correct type of disclosure to your site is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Discloses to visitors that you’re not receiving any kind of compensation for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Lets site users be aware that you may be compensated if they act on your recommendation and purchase through one of your affiliate links.
- Review/Sample Copy – Lets visitors be aware that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product or service.
- Sponsored Post – Lets your readers be aware that you were compensated in some form to write the article.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets users 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 display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Pages Content To Your Site
Ideally, you should consult your lawyer or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once this has been completed, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Upload Legal Web Pages Manually To Your Site
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 these pages for you.
We recommend creating a legals folder in your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder using FTP …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your web server and upload pages using FTP)
You can then easily add links to these pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …
(WordPress Menu)
Where To Display Legal Web Pages On Your Website
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are fully up-to-date and display clearly to all site visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your sidebar menu (or the footer of your website) so that visitors will be able to access legal information from all of your pages …
(It’s important to display links to your legal pages on all of your site’s pages)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial about displaying links to pages on your sidebar and footer menu, refer to this tutorial:
Ready-Made Legal Templates
You can easily find attorney-prepared downloadable website forms and agreements by searching online, or by visiting sites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms – Legal forms)
For more details, go here:
Alternatively, you can download a package of cut and paste legal templates created by attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Scott Talbert’s Legal Templates)
These legal templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with search and replace to add your own business name and URL, then pasted into your pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Forms include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates new FTC regulations and guidelines brought into effect in 2012)
- Privacy Policy
- ToS & 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 page on your website 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 the pages to your server as described previously.
More info:
Legal Pages – WordPress Plugins
In addition to using templates, you can simplify things by using WordPress plugins.
Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress sites that you may be interested in using:
WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WP Legal Pages Plugin)
If you don’t want to spend time creating legal web pages manually, then consider using a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages …
WP Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you time.
Here are just some of the benefits of using the WP Legal Pages plugin:
- Built-in Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
- Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Editable Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like any page on your website.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – Add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like every other WordPress page.
- Forced Options – Force page lockdown. When a user agrees to your terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
- Additional Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will appear in your main navigation menu section …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you create, edit and view legal pages from your admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings Screen)
With WP Legal Pages, you have the option of easily creating legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites, niche websites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Page type drop down menu)
You can also select from several pre-configured legal templates …
(WordPress 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 this useful plugin, visit the plugin website:
Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users containing over twenty customizable compliance templates for your website …
More info:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)
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 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 powered 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 this plugin on all of your websites.
Go here for more info:
If hiring lawyers to create your legal documentation is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic kind of legal protection on your site until you can afford to hire the services of a solicitor.
We want your website to be legally safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or consider using one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal forms, or a legal pages plugin as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates basic legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or plan to), it’s important that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service of 3rd-party products and services that you may decide to promote or offer online. Your internet presence must comply with a wide range of laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you may not be aware of.
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 are not offering legal advice. You are strongly advised 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.
Additional Legal Information
Below is a useful list of websites we suggest you visit to better understand what may be required of your site to comply and meet its legal obligations:
- FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- FTC Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
- FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
- Better Business Bureau Website
- 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
Plus …
- 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 this article has helped you understand the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your site.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group