As a business owner, the last thing you want to do is to learn the hard way that you are doing something illegal.
Online laws were designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to any person who markets, sells or promotes products or 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 you.
Recent 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, you must follow certain disclosure guidelines 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.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The introduction of new laws has implications for several online business categories, including:
- Any type of advertising, like inline ads, Google Adsense, etc.
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creators
- Bloggers
- etc.
If your site does not display certain legal pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank will not allow you to sell digital products, PayPal could suspend your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will disapprove web applications, and you will not be accepted into various advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
In this guide, we discuss why it’s important to have a legally compliant website and how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your website or blog using simple solutions.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice in this article. Do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all laws and regulations wherever you do business.
Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important
Is your business at risk? Consider what would happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- A customer has a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness workout.
- The skin care lotion you promote as an affiliate marketer gives a number of users an adverse reaction.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t clearly spelled out what you will do with their details.
- Someone copies content from your site and puts it up on their own website.
- There is no statement on your site making your site visitors aware that you are marketing a product as an affiliate and could derive financial benefits if visitors buy it.
- You have not spelled out the terms and conditions of your return policies.
- Visitors claim that your testimonials are fake and try to sue you because of it.
- You haven’t disclosed that you were given a free copy of the product you are reviewing.
- Your site contains adult content and you have not taken appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged persons.
Consider now these real examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up their personal information (including credit card info to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, he is now required to provide 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 without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private details.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many internet 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% had breached at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were breaking 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 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 targeted for non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA (Cost Per Action) Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Product Marketer
- AdSense Publisher
- Product Marketer
- Amazon Affiliate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
- Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online
It’s vitally important to ensure that your website is legally compliant.
Compliance With Third-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.
Complying with 3rd-party companies terms and policies is important.
You are expected to let your visitors know that your business complies will all legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of many companies you interact with online.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Google requires your site to display certain information when using many of their services or product features. This includes Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Generating revenue with your online properties with Google AdSense advertising …
(Google AdSense - policy requirements)
Or promoting your site via Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell products online using places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will be required to add various legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …
(Policy requirements for ClickBank digital product vendors)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you display clear disclaimers and disclosures on your website, especially when concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)
New FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Comply
FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many sites are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been the case, this often prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies 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 does not operate in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by making sure that your site is compliant with all FTC regulations.
You can find many online business resources that can provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. See our additional references and resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(Word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Social Media Applications Also Require Compliance
If you plan to create apps that will integrate with your website, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with information about your legal pages …
(Apps that integrate with social networking sites like Facebook also require compliance)
- If you are unsure whether you are 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 anything online as an affiliate marketer, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon ads, or driving visitors to your website with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to display 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 if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
Common Legal Pages You Should Include In Your Website
If you suspect that your website or blog lacks in aspects of compliance, then this section will help you.
Adding the following compliance pages to your website should help keep your business out of trouble with many consumer protection authorities and 3rd-party providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):
- About Us Page
- Contact Page
- Privacy Statement
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above pages, you may want to consider including any of the following pages where applicable:
- Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides advice about health or medical areas)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Media Terms (e.g. if you provide users with access to media on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding the right web content disclosure information is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs your readers that you’re not being paid for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Informs visitors that you may receive compensation if they act on your recommendation and purchase through your affiliate link.
- Review Or Sample Copy – Lets your visitors be aware that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product or service by the author or product developer.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs users 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 Compliance Pages To Your Website
Ideally, you will have your lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this prepared, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Upload Legal Web Pages Manually
If someone prepares 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 adding a legal folder to your server and uploading your legal pages to this folder via FTP …
(Upload legal pages to your web server using FTP)
You can then add links to these pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu admin area …
(WordPress Menu)
Where To Display Legal Web Pages On Your Site
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and clearly visible to all site visitors. You can add these to your WordPress sidebar (or the footer of your website) so that users have access to legal information from every web page …
(It’s important to display legal pages to users on all of your site’s pages)
To learn more about displaying links to pages on your sidebar using widgets, see this step-by-step tutorial:
Templates
You can find downloadable attorney-drafted disclosures and forms and agreements by searching online, or visiting websites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
More information:
Another option is to download a set of legal templates written by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website legal pages were written by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with search and replace to insert your own details, then pasted into your legal web pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Page Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page on your website for each 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 web server as previously described.
For more information, go here:
Legal Page Plugins
As well as using cut & paste legal templates, you can keep things really simple using plugins.
Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress-powered websites worth looking into:
WP Legal Pages Plugin
(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to bother with creating legal web pages manually, then consider using a plugin like WP Legal Pages …
This plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will make the task of creating and implementing legal pages on your website much easier and save you a great deal of time and effort.
Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages plugin:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the basic legal pages you need in a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- Fully 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 – WordPress content editor lets you edit legal pages just like any other page on your website.
- Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of 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 check box and delete and manage these like any page on your site.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed only when the user agrees to your terms.
- Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will be added to your main dashboard menu …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)
This lets you view, create and edit legal pages from your admin area …
(WP Legal Pages – Settings Screen)
The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites with products, review websites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Page Type)
Choose from several built-in legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages – 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
Go here to learn more this handy plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your online business …
More info:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro)
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 of Use
- Earnings Disclaimer
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin – 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 plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use the plugin on all of your websites.
For more details, go here:
If hiring legal experts to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing some kind of basic legal protection on your site until you can afford professional assistance from a solicitor.
We want your website to be protected!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal forms, or plugins - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator Software lets you quickly generate basic legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines provided by 3rd-party services and products that you may decide to promote or recommend online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumer rights, 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, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice in this article. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements pertaining to your business.
Additional Information
Here is a useful list of websites we recommend you visit to better understand what may be required of your site to comply and meet its 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
- Better Business Bureau – 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 …
- 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
- 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 compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your website using simple solutions.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)