Category: Website Planning

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

As the cybersphere continues to grow at an overwhelming speed and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s important to try and stay informed about what’s happening and ensure that your site remains compliant, especially if your digital presence is an important factor in your business strategy.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for material gain, then you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau, also known as BBB. Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – BBB)

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

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

If your website does not display certain pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo will not approve digital products for sale, PayPal may suspend your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will suspend your applications, and you won’t be accepted into various advertising and affiliate merchant networks.

If your web presence is not compliant, you could face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

In this article, we look at why it’s important to have a legally compliant website and show you inexpensive methods and solutions that will make your WordPress site legally compliant.

Is Your Website Or Blog Breaking The Law?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice in this article. As previously stated, the purpose of this article is to help make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws and regulations that govern your business and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of providers whose products or services you promote

Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important

Are you at risk? Consider for a minute what would happen to your business if these situations were to take place:

• A person has a heart attack after they use your online fitness program.
• The skin care products you sell as an affiliate gives someone who purchases from your link an adverse reaction.
• Your opt-in list displays a statement letting subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you have not spelled out exactly what you plan to do with their details.
• Someone steals content from your website and publishes it on their own site.
• There is no statement on your website making your site users aware that you are endorsing a product as an affiliate and could get paid a financial benefit if they purchase it.
• You have not spelled out the terms and conditions of your refund/return policies.
• Online visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are all fake and decide to sue you.
• You have not disclosed that you have received a free copy of the product you are reviewing.
• Your website publishes adult content and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to keep underage children from accessing it.

Consider also these documented case studies of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up personal information (including credit card details to complete an offer they were promoting. 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 internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
• An independent study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% had infringed at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in violation of 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 cautions 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 easy it is to risk becoming exposed to litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Product Promoter
• AdWords Advertiser
• Niche Marketer
• Amazon Associate
• EBay Seller
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
• Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service

It’s imperative to ensure that your online business stays legally compliant.

Complying With Third-Party Companies

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

You must let your visitors know that your website complies will all laws and professional guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and buyer confidence in your website, it’s also required by most companies you do business with online.

For example:

Google requires your site to display certain information if using many of their services or product features. This includes Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Generating revenue online with your sites using Google AdSense display advertising …

(Google AdSense policy requirements)

And even promoting your products via Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you plan to sell information products via companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you are required to add certain legal pages to your site before your products can be approved for selling via their marketplace …

(ClickBank – policy requirements)

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to display clear disclaimers and policy statements on your site, especially when using testimonials or product endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensure 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 business are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this often results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting site owners in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you do any type of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by ensuring that your website is compliant with all FTC regulations and guidelines.

There are many business resource sites that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. We provide references to some of these at the end of this article …

(Word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)

Social Media Applications Also Have Compliance Requirements

If you are planning to develop apps that will integrate with your site, you will also be required to provide sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others with access to various legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote services or products online via affiliate marketing, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or using Google AdWords pay-per-click ads to drive visitors to your pages, 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 - don’t risk having your accounts shut down.
• If you’ve been wondering whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to act now and take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.

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

Basic Legal Pages To Include In Your Site

If you suspect that your web site is falling short in aspects of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your website should help you keep out of trouble with many consumer protection agencies and third-party service providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “takedown” notices):

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

Additionally, you may want to look into implementing any of these legal pages where applicable:

• Affiliate Agreement (if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides health or medical content)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Video/Audio Terms (if you allow users to download media on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

It’s important to add correct disclosures to your site. For example:

• No Material Connection – Informs your visitors that you are not receiving compensation for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Lets visitors be aware that you will receive compensation if they act on your recommendation and buy through your affiliate link.
• Review Or Sample Copy – Lets users know that you have received a sample or review copy of the product or service by the author or product developer.
• Sponsored Post – Discloses to visitors that you were compensated in some form to write the content.
• 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 Content To Your Website

Ideally, you will have a lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this completed, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Upload Legal Pages To Your Site

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

We recommend adding a legals folder to your web 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 add links to these legal pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …

(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)

Displaying Legal Pages On Your Site

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are fully up-to-date and display clearly to all visitors. You can add these to your sidebar menu (or place them in the footer section of your website) to ensure that users can access legal information from all your pages …

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

We have created a detailed tutorial on adding links to pages on your sidebar using widgets here:

• How To Add WordPress Widgets To The Website

Store-Bought Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com – Attorney-prepared legal forms)

To learn more, go here:

• FindLegalForms.com – Attorney-drafted legal forms

Alternatively, you can purchase a package of website legal templates drafted by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)

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

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance
• 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 for each legal form you want added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload these to your web server as described previously.

For more information, go here:

• Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Form Templates

Legal Pages – Plugins

In addition to using copy & paste legal templates, you can keep things very simple by using WordPress plugins.

Here are some legal plugins for WordPress users that you may be interested in checking out:

WordPress Legal Pages

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)

If you don’t want to bother with creating legal pages manually, then consider installing WP Legal Pages …

WP Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s an affordable and well-supported plugin that will help make the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site much easier and save you a great deal of time and effort.

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

• Pre-written Legal Templates – The plugin gives you access to 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 need in around 3 minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
• Fully Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages like any other page on your site.
• Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information is then 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 every other WP page.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. When a user agrees to the terms, the page unlocks.
• Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with every new version.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will appear inside your main navigation section …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings)

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

(WP Legal Pages – Page Type)

Select from various pre-written legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Pre-configured 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 plugin, visit the plugin website:

• WP Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin

The Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your website …

Go here to learn more:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro)

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 – 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 less than one minute 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 Plugin

If hiring a lawyer 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 site until you can afford to hire the services of a solicitor.

We want your business to be legally protected!

Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (it’s FREE!), or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal templates, or plugins as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator allows you to easily generate necessary legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you do business online, you need to ensure that your site remains compliant with regulatory agencies and any guidelines and terms of service (TOS) provided by third-party services and products that you may be promoting or recommending online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.

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?

Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with the law concerning your specific business.

Additional Information

Here is a time-saving 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:

• 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 – 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
• United States 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

We hope this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your website or blog.

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