Category: Engagement Plugins

Is your website legally compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any rules or regulations, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose services or products you are offering or recommending?

As the digital way of life continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vital to stay on top of what’s going on and ensure that your website remains compliant, especially if having an online presence is a fundamental factor in your business strategy.

New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for material gain, then you will need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Search online for information about “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)

These laws has legal ramifications for several business activities, including:

• Any type of advertising, like contextual ads
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creation
• Bloggers
• etc.

If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to list digital products, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could disapprove your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to enrol in a number of advertising or online marketing networks.

More importantly, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.

The purpose of this guide is to help make you aware that your site(s) may be subject to legal requirements, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of external providers whose services or products you may be recommending online, and that there are easy solutions for WordPress that can help your site become compliant, such as the plugins discussed further below.

Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law wherever you do business.

Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important

Is your business at risk? Consider for a minute what would happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• A person has a heart attack after purchasing your online workout program.
• The skin cream you promote as an affiliate gives someone who purchases from your link allergic reactions.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you have not described exactly what you plan to do with their personal details.
• Someone copies content from your website and puts it up on their own site.
• There is no statement on your site letting your site users know that you’re an affiliate for the product you are promoting that you will earn a sales commission if they buy it.
• You don’t spell out the terms of your refund/return policies.
• A visitor claims that the testimonials on your site are all fake and decides to sue you as a result.
• You have not disclosed in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your site includes adult content and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to keep underage children from accessing it.

Consider now these real case studies of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up personal information to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer was slapped with a massive $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 does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them 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% had breached at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in breach of at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had infringed 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 notices or lose access entirely to the Google program they had infringed, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how you could easily be exposed to the risk of non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA (Cost Per Action) or CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
• MLM Networker
• Affiliate Product Promoter
• AdWords Advertiser
• Product Marketer
• Amazon Affiliate
• EBay Seller
• Adult Content Publisher
• Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
• Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service

It’s imperative to make sure that your online business complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.

Complying With Third-Party Companies - ToS, Policies, etc.

Leading online companies and government regulatory agencies emphasize the importance of observing the terms and policies of service providers.

You are required to let your site visitors know that your website complies with laws and professional guidelines. This not only increases trust and confidence in your website, it’s also a requirement of most companies you will engage with.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires websites to display legal information when using their services and features. This includes Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Making money online with your blogs with Google AdSense ads …

(Google AdSense - policy requirements)

Or promoting your site via Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you plan to sell digital products with merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will be required to add various legal pages before your products can be approved for sale in their networks …

(ClickBank – policy requirements)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you display clear disclaimers and policies to visitors, especially regarding the use of product testimonials or endorsements …

(FTC – 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 sites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this often results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting website owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you do any kind of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. you should protect your business by ensuring that your site complies with FTC regulations.

You can find many business resources that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to useful resources 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)

Don’t Forget Social Media Applications

If you are planning to create apps that integrate with your site, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others with access to various 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 assume that you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote products or services on your site via affiliate marketing, or generating revenue online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay advertising, or driving visitors to your website with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to provide on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
• If you have ever wondered if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business.

(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 I Need To Add To My Site To Be Compliant?

If your web site is falling short in aspects of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

Adding the following legal pages to your site should keep your business out of trouble with many consumer protection authorities and third-party providers, and even help you avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):

• About Us
• Contact Us
• Privacy Policy
• Terms And Conditions
• Disclaimer Pages
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

As well as the above, you may want to consider adding one or more of these pages where applicable:

• Affiliate Agreement (if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website provides general information about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Audio/Video Terms (if you provide users with access to downloadable media on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

Adding the right type of web content disclosure is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Informs your readers that you will not receive for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Lets readers know that you may benefit financially if they purchase through your affiliate links.
• Sample/Review Copy – Disclosure that informs your readers that you have received a review or sample copy of the product you’re reviewing or writing about.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets your visitors be aware that you have been compensated in some way 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 show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Legal Pages To Your Site

Ideally, you should consult lawyers and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this done, there are several ways to include them in your website.

Upload Legal Pages To Your Website

If someone prepares the legal content for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload these pages for you.

We recommend creating a legals directory in your web server and uploading your legal pages to this folder (e.g. via FTP) …

(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your web server and upload pages via FTP)

You can then easily add links to these legal pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu admin area …

(Custom WordPress Menu)

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and clearly visible to all visitors. You can insert these into the sidebar (or the footer section of your website or blog) so that visitors have access to legal information from every web page …

(Display links to legal pages on all of your website’s pages)

For a detailed tutorial about displaying links to pages on your sidebar and footer menu using widgets, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:

• Adding WordPress Widgets To Your Sidebar Area

Templates

You can easily find downloadable attorney-prepared website forms and agreements just by searching online, or going to websites like this one:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms – Attorney-drafted legal forms)

Go here to learn more:

• Find Legal Forms – Attorney-drafted legal forms

Alternatively, you can purchase a package of cut and paste website legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Website Legal Pages)

Cut & Paste website legal pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with search and replace to insert your own business name and URL, then pasted into your legal pages.

The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Forms include:

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance
• Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
• Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use: includes inter- & intra-page redundancy, Contra Proferentem provision, reservation of rights, and exclusive social media admonition.

You can either create a new page for each 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 web server as described previously.

More information:

• Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Website Legal Pages

Legal Page Plugins

As well as using legal templates, you can keep things very simple using a plugin.

Here are some legal plugins for WordPress sites you may be interested in checking out:

WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

If the idea of manually creating legal pages for your website feels too time-consuming for you, then consider installing a plugin like WP Legal Pages instead …

This plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably affordable and well-supported plugin that will help make the task of creating and implementing legal pages on your site much easier and save you loads of headaches.

Some of the benefits of using WordPress Legal Pages are:

• Pre-written 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 your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with a few mouse clicks.
• Fully Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Editable Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any page on your site.
• Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like every other page on your site.
• Forced Options – Force page lock down. Page unlocks when users agree to your terms.
• Additional Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will display inside your WordPress dashboard menu …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)

This allows you to create, edit and view your legal pages from the admin area …

(WP Legal Pages – Settings)

You have the option of creating legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites, niche sites, e-commerce sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Type of Site menu)

Select from several pre-configured legal templates …

(WordPress 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

Go here to learn more about the benefits of using this plugin:

• WP Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

total website compliance & disclaimer solution …

Go here to learn more about the plugin:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

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 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 the plugin on all of your sites.

Visit this site to learn more:

• Legal Suite Pro

If hiring a lawyer to create your legal pages is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic type of legal protection on your website 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 using one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal page templates, or a plugin as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator lets you easily generate basic legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.

***

As we’ve previously pointed out, if you do business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) for 3rd-party sites that you may decide to promote or use online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect the rights of consumers, 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?

Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice in this article. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.

Additional Legal Information

Here is a useful list of websites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your site 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
• US Patent and Trademark Office
• US Copyright Office

Additionally …

• 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 add legal pages to your WordPress website.

***