Category: Engagement Plugins

Is your website compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any rules or regulations, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any companies whose services or products you offer or promote?

Online laws, regulations, and guidelines are designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes goods or services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements won’t excuse someone from taking legal action against you.

Recent 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, then you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the (US based) Better Business Bureau, also referred to as the BBB. Search online for information about “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – BBB)

The introduction of new laws has legal implications for several business categories, including:

• Any kind of advertising, e.g. text link ads, Google Adsense, etc.
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creators
• Bloggers
• etc.

If you do not include certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t allow you to list digital products, PayPal could suspend your account, Facebook could disapprove web applications, and you won’t be allowed to enroll in a number of advertising or affiliate marketing networks.

Additionally, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.

The purpose of this article is to help make you aware that your website are required to comply with various legalities, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of other providers whose products or services you may be advertising online, and that there are plugin-based solutions for WordPress site owners that can help your website become compliant, such as the tools discussed further below.

Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice. As previously stated, the aim of this article is only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern online business practices and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of providers whose products or services you recommend

The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Is your business at risk? Consider what would happen to your business if these situations were to take place:

• Someone suffers a heart attack after purchasing your online workout program.
• The skin care lotion you sell as an affiliate gives someone who purchases from your link skin rashes.
• You’ve informed subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you have not clearly informed them what you will do with it.
• Someone copies your content and publishes it on their site.
• You have not divulged to visitors that you are marketing a product as an affiliate that you may earn an affiliate commission if visitors end up buying through your affiliate link.
• You did not spell out the conditions of your refund/return policies.
• A visitor claims the testimonials on your site are fake and tries to sue you.
• You have not disclosed that you received a free copy of the product in your review.
• Your site publishes adult-related information and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged persons.

Consider too the following documented examples of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up their personal information to complete an offer they were promoting. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer received 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 Users IDs. Many marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting 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 broken at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had broken 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 to the Google program they had infringed, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how easy it is to become exposed to the risk of litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA (Cost Per Action) Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Product Marketer
• AdWords Advertiser
• Info Product Marketer
• Amazon Associate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Adult Content Publisher
• Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
• Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online

You need to ensure that your website remains legally compliant.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Companies - ToS, Policies, etc.

Big companies and government trade regulatory agencies emphasize the need and importance of complying with the terms and policies of 3rd-party service providers.

You must let your site visitors know that your website complies with laws and recommended guidelines. This not only increases trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also a requirement of many companies you engage with.

Here are just some examples:

Google requires your site to display legal information if using many of their services. This includes Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Generating revenue online with your website with Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense ads - policy requirements)

Or promoting your services via Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you sell information-based products through places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will need to add a number of legal pages before your products are approved for sale …

(ClickBank – policy requirements)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you include clear disclaimers and statements on your website, especially when using testimonials or product endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Website Is Compliant

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many sites are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As is already the case, this typically prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies 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 is not located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by ensuring that your site complies with all FTC guidelines.

You can find many business resources that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references to some of these at the end of this article …

(You must word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)

Don’t Forget Social Media Applications

If you are planning to develop applications for your website, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others with access to your legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are not sure whether you may be 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 on your site via affiliate marketing, or monetizing your pages with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay advertising, or driving visitors to your site using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to display on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts suspended.
• If you’ve been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to act now and take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)

What Compliance Information Pages Do You Need To Add To Your Site To Be Safe From Legal Compliance Issues?

If your web site falls short in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

Adding the following legal pages to your site should help your website stay out of trouble with most regulatory agencies and external service providers, and avoid possible legal issues):

• About Us
• Contact Us
• Privacy Policy
• Terms Of Use
• Disclaimers
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

As well as the above pages, you may want to look into adding one or more of these pages:

• Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you sell or promote affiliate products or services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides general health or medical advice)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Use Of Media (if you provide users with access to videos or audio files on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

It’s important to add correct disclosures to your website. For example:

• No Material Connection – Informs site users that you will not receive for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Informs site users that you will derive some form of financial benefit if they act on your recommendation and purchase through your affiliate links.
• Review Or Sample Copy – Explains to your visitors that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product you’re reviewing or writing about.
• Sponsored Post – Informs visitors 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.

Adding Legal Pages Content To Your Site

Ideally, you should have your lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once this has been created, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Upload Legal Pages Manually To Your Site

If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload them for you.

We recommend creating a legal directory in your server and uploading your legal pages 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 links to these pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …

(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)

Where To Display Legal Pages On Your Site

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and clearly visible to all site visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to the sidebar (or the footer of your site) so that users have access to the information from every page …

(It’s important to display links to your legal pages on all of your site’s pages)

We have created a detailed tutorial about displaying links to pages on your sidebar menu or footer in WordPress using widgets here:

• Adding Widgets To Your Sidebar

Ready-Made Legal Templates

You can find downloadable attorney-drafted disclosures and internet forms and agreements just by searching online, or by visiting websites like the ones shown below:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

To learn more, visit this site:

• FindLegalForms.com

Another option is to purchase a package of website legal templates designed by legal attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages)

Cut & Paste website templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a quick search and replace to add your own business details, then pasted into your pages.

The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Forms 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 site, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload the pages to your web server as previously described.

More info:

• Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Website Legal Pages

Legal Pages – WordPress Plugins

As well as using templates, another option is to use plugins.

Here are some legal plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WordPress Legal Pages)

If manually creating legal pages for your website seems too time-consuming for you, then consider choosing WordPress Legal Pages instead …

The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s a low-priced and well-supported premium plugin that will make the task of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site a lot easier and save you many headaches.

Some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages plugin are:

• Pre-written Legal Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – You can 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 easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Editable Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages just like any page on your website.
• Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any other page on your site.
• Forced Options – Force page lockdown. When the user agrees to the terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
• Additional 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 in your main navigation menu section …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Area)

You can create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, niche sites, AdSense sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page Type)

Choose from various 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

Visit this site to learn more about the benefits of using this useful plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users with over twenty customizable compliance page templates for your online presence …

More info:

• Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro For WordPress)

Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress 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 – 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 one minute or less and the license allows you to install and use the plugin on all of your websites.

Visit this site for more information:

• Legal Suite Pro

If using the services of legal experts to create your legal documentation is out of your budget, then consider implementing some basic form of legal protection on your website until you can afford to hire a legal expert.

We want your site to be legally safe!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal documentation, or a plugin as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

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

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your site remains compliant with regulatory agencies and any guidelines and terms of service required by 3rd-party services and products that you may decide to promote or recommend online. If your website isn’t compliant 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?

Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.

Additional Legal Information

Here is a time-saving list of additional sites we recommend you visit to better understand what may be required of your site to comply and meet its legal obligations:

• FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• FTC Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
• FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
• Better Business Bureau Website
• 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
• Google AdSense Help – Required Content
• Google AdWords – Information Collection And Use
• AdWords Help – What to include in your privacy policy for remarketing
• ClickBank – Creating Your First Product
• Facebook Platform Policies

We hope this article has helped you understand the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information above to quickly add essential legal pages to your WordPress website.

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