As a business owner, you do not want to find yourself on the wrong side of the law.
Online laws were designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes products or 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.
New laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites 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 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.
(Better Business Bureau – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The new laws affect various business categories, including:
- Any kind of advertising, like Google AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creators
- Bloggers
- etc.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo will not let you list digital products for sale, PayPal could suspend your account, Facebook could suspend your applications, and you won’t be allowed to participate in a number of advertising and online marketing networks.
If your business online is not in compliance, you could also end up facing a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
In this guide, we look at why it’s important to have a legally compliant website and explain inexpensive resources and solutions that will help make your WordPress website legally compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice about your website or business. You must do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with all laws and regulations in your country or region.
Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant
Consider for one moment what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:
- A customer has a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness workout.
- The skin cream you sell as an affiliate marketer gives a number of users skin rashes.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t informed them exactly what you will do with the information you have collected.
- Someone copies content from your website and publishes it on their site.
- You have not divulged to your visitors that you are an affiliate for the product you are marketing and will get paid an affiliate commission if visitors purchase it.
- You don’t spell out the conditions of your refund and return policies.
- Someone claims your testimonials are all fake and tries to sue you as a result.
- You have not disclosed that you were given a free copy in your product review.
- Your website contains adult information and you have not taken appropriate measures to keep underaged children from accessing it.
Consider too the following actual examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up personal information to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, he was also ordered to provide everyone he does business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
- 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 prohibits using software that scrapes Users IDs. Many internet marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
- An independent 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had broken at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had broken 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 be exposed to the risks of litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Product Promoter
- AdSense Publisher
- Info Product Publisher
- Amazon Associate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
- Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product
You need to make sure that your digital presence is legally compliant.
Complying With 3rd-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.
Leading online companies and government agencies that regulate trade in most countries emphasize the importance of complying with the terms and policies of service providers.
You are obligated to let your visitors know that your website complies with legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases trust and confidence in your business, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you do business with.
For example:
Google requires your site to display legal information when using their products. This includes using features like Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Making money online with your WordPress blog using Google AdSense …
(Google AdSense ads - policy requirements)
And even promoting your products using Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell information-based products through places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will be required to add legal pages to your website before your products are approved for selling via their marketplace …
(Policy requirements digital product vendors selling via ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you display clear disclaimers and statements to visitors, especially concerning the use of testimonials or product endorsements …
(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Comply
FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many websites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As documented on their website, this typically results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting site owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you plan to do any type of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by ensuring that your website is compliant with all FTC guidelines and regulations.
You can find many business resource sites that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. See our additional resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(Structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Don’t Forget Social Media Apps
If you are planning to create applications that integrate with your site, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others will require you to provide information about various legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are not sure whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of sites like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting products or services online using affiliate marketing, or generating revenue 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 need to provide on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
- If you have been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to act now and take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
What Compliance Pages Do You Need To Add To Your Website To Be Protected From Legal Compliance Issues?
If you suspect that your web site is falling short in areas 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 agencies and third-party service providers, and avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “takedown” notices):
- About Us Page
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms & Conditions
- Website Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to consider including any of the pages listed below:
- Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Linking Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (if your website provides information about financial areas or income opportunities)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Audio/Video Terms Of Use (if you allow media downloads on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
Adding the right web content disclosure information is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – This lets visitors be aware that you are not receiving compensation for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Lets users be aware that you may derive some form of financial or similar type of benefit if they act on your recommendation and buy through affiliate links on your site.
- Review Or Sample Copy – Lets visitors know that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product by the author or product developer.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets readers be aware that you have been compensated in some form to write the article.
- 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 website publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Pages To Your Website
Ideally, you should consult your lawyer or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this done, 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 these pages for you.
We recommend creating a legals directory on your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory via FTP …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your server and upload pages via FTP)
You can then add a link to these legal pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
Where To Display Legal Web Pages On Your Website
Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and clearly accessible to visitors. You can insert these into the sidebar (or place them in the footer of your website) so that users have access to legal information from every web page …
(It’s important to display links to legal information on all of your site’s pages)
We have created a detailed tutorial on adding links to pages on your sidebar or footer here:
Use Store-Bought Templates
You can find attorney-drafted downloadable forms and agreements just by searching online, or visiting websites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms – Legal forms)
Go here for more details:
Alternatively, you can purchase a set of legal templates drafted by attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Website Legal Pages)
These legal templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with search and replace to add your own details, then pasted into your pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance
- Privacy Policy
- ToS & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page for every legal form you want to add to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload these to your server as described earlier.
More information:
WordPress Legal Page Plugins
In addition to using cut & paste templates, you can simplify things by using WordPress plugins.
Here are some plugins for WordPress users that you should check out:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to bother with creating legal web pages manually, then consider using a plugin like WP Legal Pages instead …
This plugin is not free, but it’s an affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your website a lot easier and save you many headaches.
Some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages are:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the basic legal pages you need in around 3 minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Editable Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit legal pages like every other page on your site.
- Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your content when published.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like every other WordPress page.
- Forced Options – Force page lockdown. Page unlocks when user agrees to your legal terms.
- New Features – More features get added to this plugin with every new version.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature will be added to your main dashboard area …
(WP Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you create, view and edit your legal pages from the admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings Screen)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites, niche sites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Create different legal pages)
Select from several pre-written legal templates …
(WP 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
Visit the plugin site to learn more about the benefits of using this plugin:
Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your online presence …
To learn more about this plugin go here:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress)
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 Use
- 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 less than one minute and the plugin licensing is flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites.
Go here for more information:
If using the services of lawyers to create your online legal documentation is out of your budget, then at least consider implementing some basic type of legal protection on your site until you can afford to hire a solicitor.
We want your website to be legally safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal page templates, or a WordPress legal pages plugin as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator allows you to easily generate essential 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 make money online (or are planning to), it’s important that your website is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done and any guidelines and terms of service (TOS) provided by third-party sites that you may decide to promote or sell online. Your digital presence must comply with a wide range of regulations, some 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?
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here. Do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements concerning your specific business.
References And Legal Resources
Below is a time-saving list of sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your business requires to stay compliant and meet legal obligations:
- FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- FTC 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
- United States Patent and Trademark Office
- United States Copyright Office
In Addition …
- 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
Hopefully, this article has helped you understand the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website using simple legal resources and 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)