One of the worst situations a business owner can find themselves in is to be on the wrong side of the law.
Internet laws and regulations 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 the law won’t prevent someone from taking legal action against your business.
New laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you promote anything on your website for profit, then you will need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau (BBB). Search online for information about “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 affect various business activities, including:
- Any form of advertising, like Google AdWords
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creators
- Blogging
- etc.
Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account, Facebook will reject your applications, and you will not be allowed to enrol in many advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
If your online business is not compliant, you could end up facing a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
The purpose of this guide is to help make you aware that your website(s) are subject to certain legal requirements, the importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of external providers whose services or products you may be using on your site, and that there are easy solutions for WordPress that can help your website become fully compliant, such as the plugins listed further below.
Does Your Site Comply With The Law?
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law concerning your specific business.
Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant
Is your business at risk? Consider what would happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- A user has a heart attack after purchasing your online fitness workout.
- The skin cream you promote as an affiliate marketer gives people an adverse reaction.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you have not spelled out exactly what you plan to do with their personal details.
- Someone steals your content and puts it up on their own site.
- You did not tell your site visitors that you are an affiliate for the product you’re recommending that you may receive financial benefits if visitors buy it.
- You have not spelled out the conditions of your refund or return policies.
- A visitor claims the testimonials on your site are false and tries to sue you.
- You have not disclosed in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
- Your site publishes adult-related content and you have not taken appropriate measures to keep underage persons from accessing it.
Consider too the real case studies of costly compliance breaches listed below:
- 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. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, they’re now required to issue a copy of the judgement to everyone he does business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
- 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 children’s private information.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping Users IDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
- An independent 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 infringed at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had infringed 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 cautions or lose access to the Google program whose policies they had infringed, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how easy it is to be exposed to the risk of litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA (Cost Per Action) Marketer
- Network Marketer
- Affiliate Marketer
- AdSense Publisher
- Info Product Marketer
- Amazon Affiliate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online
It’s imperative to ensure that your website has the right legal pages and information displayed to your site users.
Complying With Third-Party Companies Terms And Policies
Complying with third-party services terms and policies is important.
You must let your site users know that your business complies with legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only improves trust and confidence in your website, it’s also required by most companies you interact with online.
For example:
Google requires you to display certain information when using many of their services and product features. This includes Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Monetizing your website using Google AdSense ads …
(Google AdSense ads - policy requirements)
And even promoting your products or services via Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you plan to sell digital products using companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will be required to add certain legal pages before they will approve your products for selling via their network …
(ClickBank – policy requirements)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to add clear disclaimers and policies on your site, especially when concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – 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. Search online and you will see that many websites are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) 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 kind of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. you should protect your business interests by ensuring that your website is compliant with all FTC guidelines and regulations.
A number of business resources provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. See the references and useful resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(Structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Social Media Applications Also Have Compliance Requirements
If you are planning to create social networking applications for your site, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others with access to your legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are unsure whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting anything on your site as an affiliate marketer, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or using Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to display on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts suspended.
- If you’ve 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 policies and guidelines)
Essential Legal Pages To Add To Your Site To Ensure Compliance
If your website is lacking in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.
At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your website should help your website keep out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and 3rd-party service providers, and help to 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 look into including any of the following pages where applicable:
- 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 advice)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Use Of Media (if you allow users to download media on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding the right type of disclosure to your site is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Disclosure that informs users that you’re not receiving compensation for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Informs your readers that you will benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and buy through an affiliate link.
- Review/Sample Copy – Lets your readers know that you have received a review or sample copy of the product or service.
- Sponsored Post – Lets readers know that you have been compensated in some way 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 display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Compliance Pages To Your Website
Ideally, you will consult a lawyer and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once this has been created, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Uploading Legal Web Pages Manually
If someone prepares the legal verbiage 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 folder (e.g. via FTP) …
(Upload legal pages to your web server via FTP)
You can then easily add a link to your legal 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 clearly accessible to visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your sidebar (or the footer of your website) so that users have access to legal information from all pages …
(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 here:
Templates
You can find attorney-drafted disclosures and downloadable forms and agreements by searching online, or going to websites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
More info:
Another option is to download a set of website legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with simple 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 Form Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects new FTC regulations and guidelines that came into effect on March 2012)
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page 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 your legal pages to your web server as described previously.
For more details, go here:
Legal Pages – Plugins
In addition to using copy & paste legal templates, you can keep things very simple using plugins.
Here are some great plugins for WordPress sites worth looking into:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin
(WordPress Legal Pages)
If manually creating legal pages for your website feels too time-consuming for you, then consider installing a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages …
This plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably affordable and well-supported plugin that will make the task of creating and implementing legal pages on your site much easier and save you time.
Some of the benefits of using WordPress Legal Pages are:
- Built-in Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the legal pages you need in around 3 minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
- Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages just like every other WP page.
- Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other WordPress page.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. When the user agrees to your terms, the page unlocks.
- New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature will display inside your navigation section …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)
This allows you to create, edit and view legal pages from your admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings Screen)
You have the option of easily creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, affiliate websites, medical sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Page Type)
Choose from several built-in legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages – Built-In 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 using this useful plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
complete website compliance and disclaimer solution …
For a detailed review of this plugin go here:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)
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 And Conditions
- Earnings Disclaimer
(Legal Suite Pro – 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 one minute or less and the plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your websites.
Go here for more information:
If using the services of lawyers to create your online legal documentation is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic type of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional assistance from a solicitor.
We want your business to be legally protected!
Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (it’s FREE!), or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal content, or a WordPress legal pages plugin as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator allows you to quickly generate essential legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you are making money online, you need to ensure that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) provided by 3rd-party sites that you may be promoting or recommending online. Your website or blog must comply with a wide range of regulations, many of which you may not 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?
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we provide no legal advice in this article. Do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
Additional Legal Information
Here is a time-saving list of additional sites we recommend you visit to better understand what may be required of your site to stay compliant and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:
- 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
- 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
And …
- 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
We hope this article has helped you understand the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your website using simple methods, resources and plugins.
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