Category: Website Planning

Is your website compliant? Do you know if you are breaking the law, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any companies whose services or products you do business with?

Online laws, regulations, and guidelines are designed to protect consumers and apply to any person who sells, markets or promotes goods and services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements won’t prevent you from being slapped with a legal notice.

Recent 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 disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the US-based BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

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

The introduction of these new laws affect various online business activities, including:

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

If you do not display certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t let you list digital products for sale, PayPal may suspend your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend your applications, and you won’t be allowed to participate in most advertising or affiliate merchant networks.

If you are not compliant, you could also face a number 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 may be subject to legal requirements, the importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be advertising online, and that there are easy solutions that can help your site become compliant, such as the tools discussed further below.

Does Your Website Comply With The Law?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all laws wherever your business is based.

Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant

Consider for one moment what the implications to your business would be if the situations below were to occur:

• Someone has a heart attack after purchasing your online workout program.
• The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate marketer gives someone allergic reactions.
• Your opt-in list displays a statement letting subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you have not clearly informed them what you plan to do with the information you’ve collected.
• Someone steals content from your website and publishes it on their own website.
• There is no statement on your website telling visitors that you’re an affiliate for the product you’re endorsing and will earn financial benefits if they buy it.
• You did not spell out the conditions of your refund/return policies.
• Someone claims that your testimonials are misleading and tries to sue you.
• You didn’t disclose in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
• Your website contains adult content and you didn’t take appropriate measures to restrict access by underage children.

Consider too these documented case studies of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up their personal information to complete a debt reduction 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 private information about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape Users IDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting 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 breached 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 to the Google program they had infringed, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how easy it is to risk being targeted for litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Product Promoter
• AdWords User
• Niche Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Adult Content Publisher
• Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
• Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online

You need to ensure that your digital presence stays legally compliant.

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

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

You are expected to let your visitors know that your business complies with legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also required by most companies you will do business with online.

For example:

Google requires you to display certain information if using many of their services. This includes using features like Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Making money online with your WordPress site using Google AdSense ads …

(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)

And even promoting your products or services through Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you sell information products using companies like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will be required to add a number of legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …

(Policy requirements product vendors selling through ClickBank)

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you include clear disclaimers and policy statements to visitors, especially regarding the use of testimonials or product 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. Search online and you will see that many sites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As is already the case, 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 money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by ensuring that your website is compliant with all FTC regulations.

You can find many online resources that can provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to useful resources at the end of this article …

(Structuring your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of the law)

Don’t Forget Social Media Apps

If you plan to develop applications for your site, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with information about various legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of sites like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote anything online as an affiliate marketer, or make money online with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon ads, or driving visitors to your site 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 suspended.
• If you’ve been wondering if “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, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)

What Legal Pages Do I Need To Add To My Site To Be Compliant?

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

Adding the following compliance pages to your site should help keep your business out of trouble with most regulatory agencies and external service providers, and even help to avoid possible legal issues):

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

Additionally, you may want to consider adding any of the pages listed below if applicable:

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides content about financial areas or income opportunities)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Audio/Video Terms Of Use (e.g. if you provide users with access to videos or audio files on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

Adding correct disclosure information to your website is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – This lets your visitors know that you are not receiving any kind of compensation for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Informs your readers that you will benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and buy through affiliate links on your site.
• Review Or Sample Copy – Disclosure that informs your visitors that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product or service by the author or developer.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets readers know that you were compensated in some form to write the post.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs your visitors 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.

Adding Legal Pages To Your Site

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

Upload Legal Pages Manually To Your Website

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

We recommend adding a legal folder to your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder 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 …

(Custom WordPress Menu)

Displaying Legal Pages On Your Website

Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and clearly visible to all visitors. You can insert these into the WordPress sidebar (or the footer of your website) to ensure that users can access the information from all your pages …

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

If you need help displaying links to pages on your sidebar and footer menu, see this step-by-step tutorial:

• Adding And Configuring WordPress Widgets In The Sidebar

Store-Bought Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com)

For more information, go here:

• Find Legal Forms

Alternatively, you can purchase a set of website legal templates drafted by legal attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Legal Forms)

These legal pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with simple search and replace to insert your own details, then pasted into your legal pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects Federal Trade Commission regulations brought into effect in March 2012)
• Privacy Policy: Google, DoubleClick DART, etc.
• Terms of Service & Conditions of Use: includes 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 to add to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload the pages to your web server as previously described.

Go here for more information:

• Website Legal Pages

WordPress Legal Plugins

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

Here are some legal plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:

WP Legal Pages

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

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

This plugin is not free, but it’s an affordable and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will help make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your website a lot easier and save you a great deal of time and effort.

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

• Built-in Legal Templates – 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 a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
• Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – Content editor lets you edit legal pages just like every other WordPress page.
• Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your WordPress pages and the information is then 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 WordPress page.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. Page unlocks when the user agrees to your legal terms.
• Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with every new version.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will display inside your main navigation menu …

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

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Screen)

The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, affiliate websites, AdSense sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Create different legal page types)

Choose from a number of built-in legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Built-In 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

For more information about this plugin, go here:

• WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

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

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

• Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)

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 & 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 site. You can have legal pages 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 sites.

More information:

• Legal Suite Pro

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

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 attorney-prepared legal documentation, or plugins - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator Software allows you to quickly generate essential legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you do any type of business online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your website remains compliant with regulatory agencies and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines provided by third-party services and products that you may be promoting or offering online. If your website doesn’t comply 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 provide legal advice on our website. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all legal requirements pertaining to your business.

Additional Legal Information

Below is a useful list of sites we suggest you visit to better understand what may be required of your site to comply 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
• US Patent and Trademark Office
• US Copyright Office

Also …

• 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
• 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 legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your site.

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