Category: Website Planning

If you do any kind of business online, you do not want to find out the hard way that you have broken laws, rules or regulations.

Online laws and regulations are designed to protect consumers and apply to anyone 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.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for profit, you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection 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.

(BBB – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

These laws affect several business activities, including:

• Any kind of advertising, like Google AdSense
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creation
• Blogging
• etc.

If your website does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not let you list digital products on their network, PayPal may shut down your account, Facebook will reject your web applications, and you will not be allowed to participate in a number of advertising and online merchant networks.

You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.

This guide explains the importance of having a compliant website and explains inexpensive resources and solutions to help make your WordPress website or blog compliant in minutes.

Is Your Website Breaking The Law?

Disclaimer: Please note that 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 to ensure that your website is compliant with all laws and regulations pertaining to your business.

Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important

Is your business at risk? Consider for one minute what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:

• A person has a cardiac arrest after they use your online fitness workout.
• The skin care creams you promote as an affiliate gives someone who purchases from your link an adverse reaction.
• Your opt-in list provides a statement letting subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t clearly informed them what you will do with their details.
• Someone copies content from your site and publishes it on their website.
• There is no statement on your website or blog informing your site users that you are recommending a product as an affiliate and could derive an affiliate commission if they buy it.
• You don’t spell out the terms of your return policies.
• Online visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are fake and try to sue you.
• You did not disclose in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
• Your website publishes adult content and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to keep underaged children from accessing it.

Consider now the actual case studies of costly compliance breaches below:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up personal information (including credit card information to complete his 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 children’s private details.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
• An independently-conducted study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, more than 90% had infringed at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in breach of at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had infringed 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 they had violated, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how easy it is to risk becoming targeted for non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
• MLM Networker
• Affiliate Product Promoter
• AdSense Publisher
• Product Publisher
• Amazon Associate
• EBay Seller
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
• Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online

You need to ensure that your online business has the right legal pages and information accessible to your site visitors.

Complying With 3rd-Party Companies - ToS, Policies, etc.

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

You must let your visitors know that your website complies will all 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.

For example:

Google requires websites to display certain information when using their services. This includes Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Generating revenue with your website with Google AdSense online advertising …

(Google AdSense online advertising - policy requirements)

Or promoting your products or services through Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to sell information products via places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you are required to add a number of legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …

(Policy requirements for selling digital products through ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you add clear disclaimers and statements on your site, especially if you plan to sell or promote products and services online with the aid of testimonials or product endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Website Is Compliant

FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many sites are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As documented on their website, this typically results in 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. you should protect your business interests by making sure that your site is compliant with all FTC regulations.

Many online resources provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. We provide references to some of these at the end of this article …

(Structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Social Media Apps - Don’t Forget These

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

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are not sure whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of sites like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting anything online as an affiliate marketer, or generate revenue with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or driving visitors to your site using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need 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’ve been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies)

Essential Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Site

If you suspect that your website falls short in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.

Adding the following compliance pages to your site will keep you out of trouble with many regulatory authorities and external service providers, and avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):

• About Us Page
• Contact Page
• Privacy Policy
• Terms Of Use
• Website Disclaimer
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

In addition to the pages above, you may want to consider adding any of these compliance pages:

• Affiliate Agreement (if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Linking Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides money-making information)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Video/Audio Terms (e.g. if you allow users to download media on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

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

• No Material Connection – Informs visitors that you’re not being paid for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Disclosure that informs your readers that you will derive some form of financial or similar type of benefit if they buy through your affiliate link.
• Review/Sample Copy – Lets your visitors know that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product or service by the author or developer.
• Sponsored Post – Discloses to site users that you have been compensated in some form to write the article.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs readers 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.

Adding Legal Pages Content To Your Site

Ideally, you should have your lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once this has been created, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Uploading Legal Pages To Your Site

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

We recommend creating a legals folder in your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory using FTP …

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

You can then easily add links to these pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …

(WordPress Menu)

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

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

To learn more about displaying links to pages on your WP sidebar, refer to this tutorial:

• Configuring Widgets On Your WordPress Sidebar

Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

To learn more, visit this website:

• FindLegalForms.com

Alternatively, you can purchase a set of cut and paste legal templates created by attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Pages)

Cut & Paste website templates were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a simple quick search and replace to add your own details, then pasted into your pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates FTC regulations that came into effect in 2012)
• Privacy Policy: Google & DoubleClick DART, etc.
• Terms of Service & 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 each legal form you want added to your site, 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:

• Website Legal Pages

Legal Pages – Plugins

In addition to using cut & paste legal templates, another option is to use a plugin.

Here are some great plugins for WordPress websites and blogs that you should check out:

WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

If you don’t want to spend time creating legal web pages manually, then consider choosing a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages …

This is not a free plugin, but it’s a reasonably affordable and well-supported plugin that will help make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your site a lot easier and save you loads of headaches.

Here are just some of the benefits of using WordPress Legal Pages:

• Built-in Legal 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 the basic legal pages you will need in a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
• Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages just like any other page on your site.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can 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 check box and delete and manage these like any other page on your site.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. When the user agrees to your legal terms, the page unlocks.
• New Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature will display inside your WordPress dashboard section …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Screen)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page Type)

Choose from a number of built-in legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – 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 this plugin, go here:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

total website compliance and disclaimer solution …

Go here to learn more:

• Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin

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 Plugin 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. 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 the plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).

For more information, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro

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

We want your website to be legally safe!

Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (for FREE!), or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal documentation, or a WordPress plugin as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator Software allows you to easily generate necessary 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 do any type of business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site complies with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) for third-party products and services that you may decide to promote or offer online. Your internet presence must comply with various laws and regulatory guidelines, many of which you may not even 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, we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice. Do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.

Additional Information

Here is a useful list of additional sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your business requires to stay compliant and meet its legal obligations:

• 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 – Better Business Bureau
• 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

See Also …

• 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

We hope this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your site using simple and inexpensive methods, resources and plugins.

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