Is your website legally compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any laws, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose services or products you are promoting or selling?
As the digital way of life continues to grow at such a rapid pace and the rules keep changing, it’s absolutely vital to try and stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains legally compliant, especially if having a digital presence is important in the success of your business strategy.
New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you promote anything on your site for profit, then you will need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau (BBB). Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – Better Business Bureau)
These laws affect various online business activities, including:
- Any type of advertising, like Google AdWords
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creators
- Bloggers
- etc.
If your website does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t allow you to sell digital products, PayPal could suspend your account, Facebook will reject your applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote most advertising and online marketing networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.
In this article, we look at why it’s important to have a legally compliant website and how to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress site using inexpensive methods and solutions.
Is Your Website Breaking Rules Or Regulations?
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. You must carry out your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all laws and regulations wherever you do business.
The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant
Consider for one moment what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- A customer has a heart attack after using your online fitness program.
- The skin care lotion you promote as an affiliate marketer gives people skin rashes.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you have not spelled out exactly what you plan to do with the details you’ve collected.
- Someone copies content from your site and publishes it on their site.
- You did not tell visitors that you are an affiliate for the product you are selling and may get paid an affiliate commission if visitors decide to buy through your link.
- You don’t spell out the terms and conditions of your return policies.
- Your visitors claim that your testimonials are misleading and decide to sue you.
- You haven’t disclosed that you were given a free copy in your product review.
- Your site includes adult content and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to keep underaged persons from accessing it.
Consider also the following real examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up personal information (including credit card information to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, they’ve also been ordered to provide a copy of the judgement to everyone they do business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
- A social networking app developer copped a whopping $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 Users IDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
- An independent 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, more than 90% had broken at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in breach 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 to the Google program whose policies they had violated, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how you could become exposed to the risk of litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Product Promoter
- AdSense Publisher
- Info Product Marketer
- Amazon Associate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
- Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online
It’s vitally important to make sure that your digital presence is legally compliant.
Compliance With Third-Party Companies - ToS, Policies, etc.
All of the leading companies and government regulatory agencies emphasize the need of observing the terms and policies of service providers.
You must let your site visitors know that your business complies will all legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and confidence in your website, it’s also required by most companies you do business with online.
For example:
Google requires websites to display legal information if using many of their products. This includes using services such as Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Monetizing your online properties using Google AdSense display advertising …
(Google AdSense display advertising policy requirements)
And even promoting your services via Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell digital products through merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you will be required to add certain legal pages before your products can be approved for sale …
(Policy requirements for ClickBank product vendors)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you add clear disclaimers and disclosures to visitors, especially if you plan to sell products online with the aid of product testimonials or endorsements …
(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Site Is Compliant
FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business 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 prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute site owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you do any kind of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. you should protect your business by ensuring that your site is compliant with all FTC regulations.
A number of resources online provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. We provide additional references to some of these at the end of this article …
(It’s important to structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Social Media Applications Also Require Compliance
If you are planning to create apps that integrate with your website, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with information about your legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are unsure as to whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of sites like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting anything online via affiliate marketing, or generate revenue with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or use Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, 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’ve been wondering whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, 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 policies and guidelines)
What Compliance Pages Do You Need To Add To Your Website To Be Protected From Legal Compliance Issues?
If your website falls short in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
Adding the following compliance pages to your website should help your site stay out of trouble with most regulatory authorities and 3rd-party service providers, and even help to avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms And Conditions
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to look into including any of these legal pages where applicable:
- Affiliate Agreement (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 sell products or services online)
- Video/Audio Terms (if you allow users to download media on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
Adding the correct type of web content disclosure is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs visitors that you’re not receiving any kind of compensation for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Lets site users know that you may benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and buy through an affiliate link.
- Sample Or review Copy – Lets your visitors be aware that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product.
- Sponsored Post – Lets your readers be aware that you were compensated in some form to write the post.
- 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 online publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Pages To Your Website
Ideally, you will consult a lawyer and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this completed, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Upload Legal Pages To Your Website
If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend creating a legals directory in your server and uploading your legal pages to this directory using FTP …
(Upload legal pages to your web server using FTP)
You can then add a link to these legal pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu administration …
(WordPress Menu)
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are fully up-to-date and clearly accessible to your visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into your WordPress sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your site) to ensure that users have access to the information from every page …
(Display links to your legal information on all of your website’s pages)
To learn more about adding links to pages on your sidebar, see this step-by-step tutorial:
Templates
You can find attorney-prepared downloadable forms and agreements by searching online, or visiting sites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms)
More info:
Alternatively, you can purchase a package of cut and paste legal templates designed by legal attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Form Templates)
These legal pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with simple search and replace to add your own business details, then pasted into your pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Page Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates new FTC regulations and guidelines brought into effect in March 2012)
- Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
- ToS & 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 pages and publish or upload the pages to your web server as described earlier.
More info:
WordPress Legal Plugins
As well as using copy & paste legal templates, you can simplify things using plugins.
Here are some great plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WP Legal Pages)
If manually creating legal pages for your website seems too time-consuming for you, then consider using WordPress Legal Pages instead …
This plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site much easier and save you many headaches.
Here are just some of the benefits of using the WordPress Legal Pages:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – Includes 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 will need in around 3 minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
- Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Editable Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like every other WP page.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to your pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when published.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other page on your website.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. When a user agrees to your terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
- New Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will appear inside your dashboard menu …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Menu)
This lets you create, view and edit your legal pages from the admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Screen)
With WP Legal Pages, you can easily create legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites with products, review sites, AdSense sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Page type menu)
Choose from a number of built-in legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Built-In 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 for more details about the benefits of using this plugin:
Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar is a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your web presence …
Go here to learn more about this plugin:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(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 Service
- 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 powered site. Your legal pages can be 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 websites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
Visit this site for more information:
If using the services of lawyers to create your legal documentation is out of your budget, then consider at least implementing some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford a lawyer.
We want your business to be safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal documents, or plugins - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator lets you easily generate 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 make money online, it’s important that your website complies with regulatory agencies and any terms of service and guidelines of 3rd-party services and products that you may decide to promote or endorse online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant 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 cannot provide legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law concerning your specific business.
Additional Resources
Below is a time-saving list of websites we suggest you visit to better understand what your website may require to stay compliant and meet 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
- 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
Plus …
- 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
We hope you have found this article useful and that it has helped you understand why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website or blog using inexpensive resources and solutions.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group