Is your WordPress site legally compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking the law, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose services or products you offer or recommend?
Internet laws, regulations, and guidelines were designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to anyone who sells, markets 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 someone from taking legal action against you.
New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you promote anything on your site for material gain, you need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(BBB – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
These laws has consequences for various online business categories, including:
- Any type of advertising, including PPC advertising
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
If your site does not display certain pages (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t allow you to list digital products, PayPal may suspend your account, Facebook will reject your applications, and you will not be allowed to enrol in most advertising and online marketing networks.
If you are not compliant, you could end up facing a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
The purpose of this guide is to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern business practices online, the importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of external providers whose services or products you may be endorsing on your site, and that there are easy solutions for WordPress that can help your online properties become fully compliant, such as the plugins that we discuss further below.
Is Your Website Compliant?
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all laws and regulations wherever you do business.
Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant
Consider for one minute what would happen to your business if any of these situations were to take place:
- Someone has a heart attack after purchasing your online fitness workout.
- The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate gives someone who purchases from your link skin rashes.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you have not informed them exactly what you plan to do with their details.
- Someone copies your content and publishes it on their own website.
- There is no statement on your website making your site users aware that you’re an affiliate for the product you’re selling that you may get paid an affiliate commission if they buy it.
- You don’t spell out the terms of your return policies.
- Online visitors claim that your testimonials are false and try to sue you.
- You have not disclosed in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
- Your website includes adult information and you have not taken appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged children.
Consider now these real case studies of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up their personal information (including credit card details to complete an offer they were promoting. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer received 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 UIDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, more than 90% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had breached at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had infringed at least 3 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 notices or lose access to the Google program whose policies they had infringed, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how you could be exposed to the risks of non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA (Cost Per Action) or CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Marketer
- AdSense Publisher
- Info Product Publisher
- Amazon Affiliate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
- Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product
It’s imperative to make sure that your website or blog has the right legal pages and information accessible to site users.
Compliance With 3rd-Party Services
Complying with 3rd-party companies terms and policies is important.
You are obligated to let your visitors know that your website complies will all laws and recommended guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and confidence in your site, it’s also required by most companies you interact with.
For example:
Google requires you to display certain information if using their services or features. This includes Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Monetizing your site with Google AdSense display advertising …
(Google AdSense display advertising policy requirements)
And even promoting your site through Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you plan to sell information products via merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you are required to add various legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …
(Policy requirements for using ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you include clear disclaimers and policies on your website, especially concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Be Compliant
New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many business are still 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 companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you do any type of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. you should protect your business interests by making sure that your site complies with FTC regulations and guidelines.
You can find many sites that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. We provide additional references at the end of this article …
(You must word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Social Media Applications - Don’t Forget These
If you are planning to create apps for your website users, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others with access to various legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are unsure whether or not you are 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 as an affiliate marketer, or make money online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay 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 need to provide on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
- If you’ve ever wondered whether “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 services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)
What Legal Information Do I Need To Add To My Site To Be Legally Compliant?
If you suspect that your web site is lacking in aspects of compliance, then this section will help you.
Adding the following compliance pages to your site will help your website stay out of trouble with many consumer protection agencies and external service providers, and avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “takedown” notices):
- About Us Page
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the above, you may want to consider adding any of these legal pages if applicable:
- Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Links Policy
- Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides content about health or medical areas)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Use Of Media (e.g. if you allow users to download videos or audio files on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
It’s important to add the correct types of disclosure pages to your website. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs your readers that you’re not being paid for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Lets users be aware that you will benefit financially if they purchase through your affiliate links.
- Sample/Review Copy – Lets visitors be aware that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product or service.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets users be aware that you have been compensated in some form to write the content.
- 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 To Your Website
Ideally, you should have a lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this completed, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Uploading Legal Pages Manually
If someone prepares and delivers the legal content 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 your legal pages to this directory using FTP …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your web server and upload pages using FTP)
You can then easily add a link to your pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu feature …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are fully up-to-date and clearly accessible to visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your WordPress sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your site) so that users have access to the information from every web page …
(Display links to legal pages on all of your website’s pages)
If you need help displaying links to pages on your WP sidebar, see this tutorial:
Use Legal Templates
You can easily find attorney-drafted downloadable website forms and agreements by searching online, or going to websites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
More information:
Alternatively, you can download a package of website legal templates drafted by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website legal templates were written by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with simple search and replace to insert your own business details, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal forms 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
- ToS & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page 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 these to your web server as described earlier.
More information:
Legal Page Plugins
As well as using templates, you can simplify things by using WordPress plugins.
Here are some great plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:
WordPress Legal Pages
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin)
If you don’t want to bother with creating legal web pages manually, then consider installing a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages instead …
This is not a free plugin, but it’s a low-priced and well-supported plugin that will make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site a lot easier and save you time.
Some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages are:
- Built-in Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the basic legal pages you will need in around 3 minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
- Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Editable Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like every other WP page.
- Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any page on your site.
- Forced Options – Force page lockdown. Page unlocks only when users agree to your legal terms.
- New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will display inside your navigation area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)
This allows you to create, view and edit your legal pages from your admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings Area)
You can create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, review sites, e-commerce sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Create different legal pages)
You can also select from several pre-configured legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Built-In 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
For more details about the benefits of using this useful plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin that contains over 20 customizable legal pages for your web presence …
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro)
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 And Conditions
- 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. 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 the plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell).
For more information, go here:
If hiring legal experts to create your online legal documentation is currently out of your budget, consider implementing some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford to hire a lawyer.
We want your website to be protected!
Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (for FREE!), or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-prepared legal documentation, or a plugin - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator quickly generates necessary legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
***
As stated earlier, if you do any kind of business online, it’s important that your site remains compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online and the guidelines and terms of service provided by 3rd-party sites that you may be promoting or using online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended 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, 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 to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements pertaining to your specific business.
References And Resources
Here is a useful list of websites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your site may require to comply and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:
- FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- FTC Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
- FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
- BBB – 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
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 compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your WordPress site.
***
"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