Is your website legal? Do you know if you are breaking the law, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose products or services you are promoting or offering?
As the digital economy continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules keep changing, it’s vital to stay on top of what’s going on and make sure that your website remains legal, especially if having an online presence is important in the success of your business strategy.
New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for material gain, you must follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the (US based) Better Business Bureau (BBB). Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The new laws has consequences for several business categories, including:
- Any kind of advertising, e.g. Google AdWords
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creation
- Bloggers
- etc.
If you do not include certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not approve your digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account, Facebook will reject web applications, and you won’t be allowed to participate in a range of advertising or online merchant networks.
If your digital presence is not in compliance, you could also end up facing a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that your website may be subject to legal requirements, the importance of complying with the terms of service of other providers whose products or services you may be selling online, and that there are solutions that can help your website become fully compliant, such as the tools discussed further below.
Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice on this website. Do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all laws wherever you do business.
Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant
Consider what the implications to your business would be if the following scenarios were to take place:
- Someone has a heart attack after using your online workout program.
- The skin cream you sell as an affiliate marketer gives someone who purchases from your link skin rashes.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t defined what you will do with the details you’ve collected.
- Someone copies content from your website and publishes it on their own website.
- There is no statement on your site letting your site users know that you are endorsing a product as an affiliate that you may derive an affiliate commission if they end up purchasing using your link.
- You did not spell out the terms and conditions of your refund policies.
- A visitor claims that your testimonials are misleading and decides 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 includes adult content and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged persons.
Consider also these actual examples of costly compliance breaches:
- 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 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 marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, more than 90% had infringed at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least two 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 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 being a target of non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA (Cost Per Action) or PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Product Promoter
- AdSense Publisher
- Niche Marketer
- Amazon Associate
- EBay Seller
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
- Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online
It’s vitally important to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your website or blog has the right legal pages and information accessible to site users.
Compliance With 3rd-Party Companies Terms And Policies
Complying with third-party companies terms and policies is important.
You are expected to let your visitors know that your website complies will all laws and recommended guidelines. This not only improves trust and confidence in your website, it’s also required by most companies you interact with online.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Google requires your site to display certain information if using many of their products. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Generating revenue with your website with Google AdSense advertising …
(Google AdSense policy requirements)
Or promoting your services via Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you sell products online with places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will need to add various legal pages to your website before they will approve your products for selling via their marketplace …
(ClickBank – policy requirements)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you add clear disclaimers and disclosures on your site, especially if you plan to sell products and services online using testimonials or product endorsements …
(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)
New FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Be Compliant
FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many business are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As is already the case, this typically results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting site owners in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you plan to do any kind of selling 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 interests by making sure that your site is compliant with all FTC regulations.
There are many online resources that can provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. We provide links to useful and additional references to some of these at the end of this article …
(You must structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Social Media Applications - Don’t Forget These
If you plan to create social networking applications that integrate with your website, social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others will require you to provide access to various legal pages …
(Apps that integrate with social networking sites like Facebook also require compliance)
- If you are unsure whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of service providers like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote products or services on your site as an affiliate marketer, or monetize your pages 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 to avoid having your accounts suspended.
- If you have ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business interests.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party websites require you to comply with their policies)
What Legal Information Pages Do I Need To Add To My Website To Be Legally Compliant?
If your website or blog is falling short in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your site should help you stay out of trouble with many regulatory authorities and third-party providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms And Conditions
- Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the pages above, you may want to look into adding any of the pages listed below:
- Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Links Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides general content about financial areas or money-making opportunities)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Video/Audio Terms Of Use (e.g. if you provide users with access to downloadable videos or audio files on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
It’s important to add correct disclosure information to your website. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs visitors that you will not receive for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Lets readers be aware that you will receive compensation if they act on your recommendation and buy through affiliate links on your site.
- Review/Sample Copy – Lets your readers know that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product or service.
- Sponsored Post – Informs site users that you have been compensated in some form to write the content.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets visitors know 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 display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Pages To Your Website
Ideally, you should consult lawyers and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this completed, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Uploading Legal Pages Manually To Your Site
If someone prepares and delivers 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 creating a legals folder in your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder using FTP …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your server and upload pages using FTP)
You can then add a link to these legal pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu administration …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and clearly visible to all visitors. You can insert these into the sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your website or blog) to ensure that visitors can access the information from every page …
(It’s important to display links to your legal information on all of your site’s pages)
We have created a detailed tutorial on displaying links to pages on your sidebar or footer here:
Templates
You can easily find attorney-drafted downloadable forms and agreements by searching online, or going to sites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms)
Go here to learn more:
Another option is to download a set of cut & paste website legal templates created by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Scott Talbert’s Legal Forms)
These legal templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a quick search and replace to insert your own details, then pasted into your pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Pages include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance
- Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
- ToS & Conditions of Use: with inter- & intra-page redundancy, Contra Proferentem provision, reservation of rights, and exclusive social media admonition.
You can either create a new WordPress page for every legal form you want to add to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your server as described earlier.
More information:
Plugins – Legal Pages
In addition to using legal templates, you can keep things really simple using a plugin.
Here are some great legal WordPress plugins worth looking into:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin
(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to spend time creating legal pages manually, then consider installing WP Legal Pages instead …
This plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably low-priced and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you time.
Some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages are:
- Pre-written Legal 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 clicks of the mouse.
- Fully Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages just like any page on your website.
- Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any page on your site.
- Forced Options – Force page lockdown. When users agree to your legal terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
- Additional Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature will appear inside your navigation menu …
(WP Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you create, view and edit legal pages from your admin area …
(WP Legal Pages – Settings Screen)
You have the option of creating legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites, affiliate/review sites, medical sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Type of Site drop down menu)
Choose from a number of built-in 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 this plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your website …
Learn more here:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)
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 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 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. 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.
More info:
If using the services of a lawyer to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, consider implementing some basic kind of legal protection on your site until you can afford a lawyer.
We want your business to be legally safe!
Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (it’s FREE!), or consider using one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-written legal templates, or plugins as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates basic legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you do business online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your website is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) for third-party products and services that you may be promoting or selling online. Your website or blog must comply with a wide range of 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?
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice on our website. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
Additional Legal Information
Here is a time-saving list of sites we recommend you visit to better understand what your site may require to comply 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
- 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
We hope you have found this article useful and that it has helped you understand why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your website or blog.
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