Is your website compliant? Do you know if you are breaking the law, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any companies whose services or products you are doing business with?
As the digital era continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules keep changing, it’s vital that you try to stay informed about what’s going on and ensure that your website or blog remains legal, especially if having a digital presence is important in the success of your overall business strategy.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for profit, you 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 for more details.
(Better Business Bureau Website)
The new laws has ramifications for several business activities, including:
- Any kind of advertising, including Google AdWords or AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank won’t allow you to sell digital products, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will disapprove your applications, and you won’t be accepted into many advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
If you are not compliant, you could also face a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
This article explains the importance of having a compliant website and how to quickly add legal pages to your website or blog.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article. As stated previously, the purpose of this article is only to make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal policies in accordance with the laws and regulations that govern business and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you promote
Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important
Consider what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:
- Someone suffers a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness workout.
- The skin care creams you promote as an affiliate marketer gives a number of users allergic reactions.
- You’ve told your subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t defined what you’ll do with it.
- Someone steals your content and puts it up on their own website.
- There is no statement on your website or blog making your visitors aware that you are promoting a product as an affiliate that you will earn a commission if they buy via your link.
- You have not spelled out the terms of your return policies.
- Someone claims that the testimonials on your site are misleading and tries to sue you because of it.
- You have not disclosed that you have received a free copy of the product in your review.
- Your site contains adult information and you didn’t take sufficient measures to restrict access by underage persons.
Consider now the real examples of costly compliance breaches described:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up personal information to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, they’re now required to give everyone he does business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
- A social networking app developer copped a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private details about children.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping UIDs. Many internet marketers gambled that they could get away with it 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 websites picked at random, more than 90% had breached at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in violation of 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 to the Google program whose policies with the infringement, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how easy it is to risk becoming exposed to non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Promoter
- AdSense Publisher
- Info Product Marketer
- Amazon Affiliate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online
It’s imperative to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your online business stays fully compliant with the law.
Compliance With Third-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.
Compliance with third-party services terms and policies is important.
You must let your visitors know that your business complies with laws and recommended guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you interact with online.
For example:
Google requires you to display certain information when using their services. This includes using services like Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Monetizing your site with Google AdSense …
(Google AdSense display advertising policy requirements)
Or promoting your services or products through Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you plan to sell products online with merchants 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 sale in their network …
(Policy requirements for ClickBank vendors)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you include clear disclaimers and policy statements on your site, especially if you plan to use testimonials or product endorsements …
(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)
New FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Comply
New FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many websites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has already been the case, this will most likely prompt the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you plan to do any kind of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by ensuring that your site is compliant with all FTC regulations and guidelines.
Many business resources provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your site 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 laws and regulations)
Don’t Forget Social Media Apps
If you plan to develop social networking applications that integrate with your website, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others with access to various legal pages …
(Facebook apps also require compliance)
- If you are not sure whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote anything online via affiliate marketing, or generate revenue 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 are required to display on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts terminated.
- If you have ever wondered 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 third-party services require you to comply with their policies)
Basic Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Website To Ensure Compliance
If you suspect that your web site is lacking in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
Adding the following compliance pages to your website will help your website stay out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and third-party providers, and avoid potential legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms & Conditions
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to look into adding any of the following pages where applicable:
- Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you sell or promote affiliate products and services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Linking Policy
- Health Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides general health or medical content)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Use Of Media (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding correct disclosure information to your site is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Lets users know that you’re not being paid for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Lets your readers be aware that you will be compensated if they buy through your affiliate links.
- Sample Or review Copy – Lets users be aware that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product by the author or developer.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs your visitors that you were compensated in some way to write the post.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs users 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 display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Pages Content To Your Website
Ideally, you will consult your lawyer or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once these have been completed, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Uploading Legal Web Pages Manually To Your Site
If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend adding a legals folder to your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder (e.g. via FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your web server and upload pages using FTP)
You can then easily add a link to your pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are fully up-to-date and clearly visible to your visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to the WordPress sidebar (or the footer of your site) so that users have access to the information from every page …
(It’s important to display legal information to users on all of your website’s pages)
To learn more about displaying links to pages on your sidebar, see this step-by-step tutorial:
Templates
You can easily find attorney-drafted downloadable forms and agreements by searching online, or visiting websites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
More information:
Another option is to purchase a set of cut & paste website legal templates created by attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website legal pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with search and replace to add your own business details, then pasted into your pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Form Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new WordPress page for every legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload these to your server as described earlier.
More information:
Plugins – Legal Pages
As well as using templates, another option for adding legal pages to your website is to use WordPress plugins.
Here are some great WordPress plugins that you may be interested in using:
WP Legal Pages Plugin
(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)
If the idea of creating legal pages manually feels too time-consuming for you, then consider installing a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages …
This is not a free plugin, but it’s a reasonably affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will help make the task of creating and implementing legal pages on your site much easier and save you many headaches.
Some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages are:
- Built-in 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 your basic legal pages in a few minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
- Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages like any WordPress page.
- Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your WordPress 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 page on your site.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed only when user agrees to your terms.
- Additional Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will be added to your main navigation menu section …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you create, edit and view legal pages from the admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Area)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites, review websites, e-commerce sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Create different legal page types)
You can also select from various built-in legal templates …
(WP 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
Visit this website to learn more this great plugin:
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin that contains over twenty customizable compliance pages for your site …
Learn We have written an in-depth article about this plugin here:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro)
Legal Suite Pro 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. 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 (even sites that you decide to sell).
For more information, go here:
If using the services of legal experts to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some form of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional assistance from a solicitor.
We want your business to be 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 forms, or a WordPress legal pages plugin as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates essential legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you do business online (or are planning to), you need to ensure that your site stays compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines for third-party products and services that you may decide to promote or endorse online. Your website or blog must comply with a wide range of regulations, some 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, we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.
Additional Information
Below is a time-saving list of additional sites we suggest you visit to better understand what may be required of your site 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
- US Patent and Trademark Office
- United States Copyright Office
And …
- 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
Hopefully, this article has helped you understand the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your WordPress website using simple and cost-effective methods and solutions.
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