Is your website compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any laws, rules or regulations, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose services or products you endorse or sell?
Internet laws are designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes products or services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements won’t excuse you from being slapped with a legal notice.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you promote anything on your site for profit, you must follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the (US based) Better Business Bureau, also known as BBB. Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Better Business Bureau)
The introduction of these laws affect several online business categories, including:
- Any form of advertising, like Google AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creators
- Bloggers
- etc.
Without certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to list digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will disapprove web applications, and you will not be allowed to promote a range of advertising and online merchant networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
In this guide, we discuss the importance of having a compliant website and show you simple and inexpensive solutions to make your WordPress website or blog legally compliant.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice. As previously stated, the purpose of this article is to make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws and regulations governing business practices online and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of companies whose products or services you advertise
Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important
Consider what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:
- A person suffers a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness workout.
- The skin care lotion you sell as an affiliate gives someone an allergic reaction.
- You’ve informed subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t clearly informed them what you will do with the details you have collected.
- Someone copies content from your website and puts it up on their website.
- There is no statement on your site making your site visitors aware that you are an affiliate for the product you’re marketing and may derive an affiliate commission if visitors purchase using your link.
- You haven’t spelled out the conditions of your refund/return policies.
- Someone claims your testimonials are all fake and tries to sue you because of it.
- 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 didn’t take appropriate measures to keep underaged children from accessing it.
Consider now the documented case studies of costly compliance breaches below:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up personal information (including credit card details to complete a debt reduction offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer copped a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing private details about children.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping UIDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
- An independent study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-picked websites, more than 90% were in breach of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had breached at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had breached 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:
- CPA (Cost Per Action) or PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
- Network Marketer
- Affiliate Promoter
- AdSense Publisher
- Info Product Marketer
- Amazon Affiliate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
- Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online
It’s imperative to ensure that your website has the right legal pages and clearly accessible to your site visitors.
Compliance With Third-Party Services
Compliance with 3rd-party companies terms and policies is important.
You are obligated to let your visitors know that your website complies with all necessary legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and confidence in your site, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you do business with.
For example:
Google requires you to display certain information when using many of their products or features. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Monetizing your WordPress blogs with Google AdSense …
(Google AdSense - policy requirements)
Or promoting your business through Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you plan to sell information products through places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will need to add a number of legal pages to your site before they will approve your products for selling via their network …
(Policy requirements for ClickBank vendors)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you add clear disclaimers and policy statements on your website, especially regarding the use of testimonials or product endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant
New 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 documented on their website, this often 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 business online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business by ensuring that your site is compliant with all FTC regulations.
You can find many sites that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. See the additional references and useful resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(Word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Don’t Forget Social Media Applications
If you are planning to create applications that integrate with your site, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others with access to various 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 via affiliate marketing, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, 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 their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
- If you’ve been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
What Compliance Pages Should I Add To My Site To Be Legally Compliant?
If you suspect that your web site falls short in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.
Adding the following compliance pages to your website will help keep your business out of trouble with most consumer protection agencies and external providers, and avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “takedown” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Page
- Privacy Statement
- Terms Of Use
- Website Disclaimer
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the pages above, you may want to look into adding one or more of the following pages where applicable:
- Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Linking Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides general money-making advice)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Audio/Video Terms Of Use (e.g. if you provide users with access to media on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding the right type of web content disclosure is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs site users that you are not being paid for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Lets your visitors be aware that you will be compensated if they purchase through an affiliate link.
- Sample/Review Copy – Explains to your readers that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product or service.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs your readers that you have been compensated in some form to write the article.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs users that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to satisfy the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring website publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Website
Ideally, you should consult lawyers or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Uploading Legal Pages To Your Website
If someone prepares and delivers the legal content for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend adding a legals directory to 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 add a link to these pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
Displaying Legal Pages On Your Site
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and clearly accessible to your visitors. You can add these to your sidebar menu (or the footer section of your website or blog) to ensure that users have access to legal information from every web page …
(Display links to legal information on all of your site’s pages)
If you need help displaying links to pages on your WordPress sidebar, see this tutorial:
Using Legal Templates
You can easily find attorney-drafted disclosures and downloadable forms and agreements by searching online, or visiting sites like the ones shown below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms – Legal forms)
For more information, go here:
Alternatively, you can download a package of cut and paste website legal templates designed by legal attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages)
These legal pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a simple quick search and replace to insert your own details, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Pages include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance
- Privacy Policy
- ToS & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new WordPress page for each legal form you want to add to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload the pages to your server as previously described.
Go here for more information:
Legal Page Plugins
In addition to using templates, you can keep things very simple by using plugins.
Here are some great WordPress plugins worth looking into:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin
(WordPress Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to bother with creating legal web pages manually, then consider using a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages …
The WP Legal Pages 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 website much easier and save you loads of headaches.
Some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages are:
- Built-in Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
- Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit legal pages just like any other WordPress page.
- Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any page on your website.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. When users agree to the legal terms, the page unlocks.
- New Features – More features are being added to this plugin with each new version.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will display inside your main WordPress dashboard section …
(WP Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you view, create and edit legal pages from the admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Screen)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, niche sites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Type of Site menu)
Select from a number of pre-written legal templates …
(WP 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
Go here to learn more about using this plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin containing over twenty customizable legal templates for your web presence …
To learn more about this plugin go here:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro 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 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 site. You can have legal pages installed and set up on your site in less than one minute and the license allows you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites.
To learn more, go here:
If hiring a lawyer to create your online legal documentation is out of your budget, then at least consider implementing some basic type of legal protection on your website until you can afford to hire a solicitor.
We want your business to be 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 attorney-prepared legal documents, or a WordPress plugin - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator quickly generates basic legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you do any kind of business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site 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 offer online. Your internet presence must comply with numerous laws and regulatory guidelines, 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 offer no legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with the law in your country or region.
Legal Information
Below is a time-saving list of additional sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what your business requires to remain compliant and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:
- Federal Trade Commission Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- FTC 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
- United States Copyright Office
In Addition …
- 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 you have found this article useful and that it has helped you understand the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website or blog.
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"I was absolutely amazed at the scope and breadth of these tutorials! The most in-depth training I have ever received on any subject!" - Myke O'Neill, DailyGreenPost.com