One of the worst predicaments a website owner can find themselves in is to be on the wrong side of the law.
Internet laws and regulations are designed to protect consumers and apply to anyone who sells, markets or promotes products or services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law won’t prevent you from being slapped with a legal notice.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you promote anything on your site for material gain, then 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. Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – BBB)
These laws affect various business categories, including:
- Any kind of advertising, like inline ads, Google Adsense, etc.
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
If your site does not display certain pages to visitors (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo will not let you list digital products for sale, PayPal could suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will disapprove your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to enrol in various advertising or online merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.
In this article, we discuss the importance of having a legally compliant website and present simple and inexpensive resources and solutions to make your WordPress website legally compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With The Law?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice about your website or business. As stated previously, the purpose of this article is only to make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws that govern your business and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of providers whose products or services you recommend on your website or blog
Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant
Is your business at risk? Consider what would happen to your business if the following were to happen:
- Someone suffers a heart attack after they use your online fitness program.
- The skin care products you promote as an affiliate marketer gives a number of users allergic reactions.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t clearly informed them what you plan to do with the details you have collected.
- Someone copies your content and puts it up on their site.
- There is no statement on your website or blog letting visitors know that you’re an affiliate for the product you’re recommending and may derive an affiliate commission if they purchase using your affiliate link.
- You don’t spell out the terms of your refund and return policies.
- A visitor claims that the testimonials on your site are all fake and decides to sue you.
- You have not disclosed that you were given a free copy in a product review.
- Your site publishes adult content and you did not take appropriate measures to restrict access by underage persons.
Consider too the real examples of costly compliance breaches listed below:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up personal information to complete a debt reduction offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer received a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private information.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes UIDs. 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 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had breached 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 entirely 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 risk being a target of non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA (Cost Per Action) Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Marketer
- AdSense Publisher
- Niche Marketer
- Amazon Associate
- EBay Seller
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
- Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online
it’s important to ensure that your website is legally compliant.
Complying With Third-Party Companies - ToS, Policies, etc.
Complying with 3rd-party services terms and policies is important.
You must let your visitors know that your website complies with legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only improves trust and confidence in your site, it’s also required by most companies you will engage with.
For example:
Google requires you to display legal information when using many of their services. This includes using services like Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Monetizing your website using Google AdSense ads …
(Google AdSense policy requirements)
Or promoting your site using Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you plan to sell products online with companies like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you will be required to add various legal pages to your site before your products can be approved for sale …
(ClickBank – policy requirements for sellers)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you add clear disclaimers and policy statements to visitors, especially if you plan to use testimonials or product endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant
New FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many websites are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As documented on their website, this typically results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting website owners in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you plan to do any type of business 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 interests by making sure that your website complies with all FTC guidelines and regulations.
A number of sites provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. See the resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(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 create apps for your website users, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with information about your legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are not sure whether or not 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 products or services online as an affiliate marketer, or generating revenue online with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or use Google AdWords pay-per-click ads to drive visitors to your pages, 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 - don’t risk having your accounts terminated.
- If you’ve been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)
Basic Legal Pages To Add To Your Site To Ensure Compliance
If your website or blog is lacking in areas 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 most consumer protection authorities and 3rd-party service providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues):
- About Us Page
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms & Conditions
- Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the pages above, you may want to consider adding one or more of these legal pages where applicable:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you provide information about affiliate products and services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides financial advice)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Audio/Video Terms (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
Adding the right type of disclosure to your website is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs users that you’re not being paid for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Lets site users be aware that you will benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and purchase through one of your affiliate links.
- Review Or Sample Copy – Lets visitors know that you have received a sample or review copy of the product or service by the author or developer.
- Sponsored Post – Lets users know that you were compensated in some way to write the article.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets 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 Content To Your Site
Ideally, you will have your lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once this has been done, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Upload Legal Web Pages Manually
If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend creating a legals directory in your web server and uploading your legal pages to this directory (e.g. via FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your web server and upload pages via FTP)
You can then add links to your pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu feature …
(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)
Where To Display Legal Web Pages On Your Website
Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and display clearly to all visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into your WordPress sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your website) to ensure that users have access to the information from every web page …
(Display links to legal pages on all of your website’s pages)
We have written a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your WordPress sidebar using widgets here:
Templates
You can find downloadable attorney-drafted internet forms and agreements by searching online, or visiting sites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms)
To learn more, go here:
Another option is to download a set of website legal templates drafted by legal attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Scott Talbert’s Legal Templates)
Cut & Paste website legal 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 name and URL, then pasted into your pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Templates 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 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 your legal pages to your server as described earlier.
Go here to learn more:
Plugins – Legal Pages
As well as using cut & paste templates, another option is to use plugins.
Here are some plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:
WordPress Legal Pages
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)
If you don’t want to bother with creating legal pages manually, then consider using a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages instead …
This plugin is not free, but it’s an affordable and well-supported plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you a great deal of time and effort.
Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages plugin:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
- Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any WordPress page.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like every other page on your website.
- Forced Options – Force page lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed when users agree to your legal terms.
- New Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will be added to your main dashboard area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Menu)
This allows you to view, create and edit legal pages from the admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings Area)
With WPLegal Pages, you have the option of easily creating legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites with products, niche sites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Page type drop down menu)
Choose from various built-in legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Pre-configured 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
To learn more this useful plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-powered websites and blogs containing over 20 customizable legal templates for your online presence …
To learn more about the plugin go here:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro)
Legal Suite Pro 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. Your legal pages can be installed and set up on your site in one minute or less and the plugin licensing is flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
Go here to learn more:
If using the services of legal experts to create your legal documentation is currently out of your budget, then consider at least implementing some form of basic legal protection on your website until you can afford to hire a solicitor.
We want your website to be protected!
Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (for FREE!), or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-written legal page templates, or a legal pages plugin - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator Software allows you to easily generate basic legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you engage in any form of commercial activity online, it’s important that your website stays compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices and the terms of service and guidelines provided by third-party services and products that you may be promoting or recommending online. If your website isn’t compliant 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?
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on our website. 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 concerning your specific business.
Resources
Here is a useful list of sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your website to stay compliant and meet its legal obligations:
- Federal Trade Commission Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- Federal Trade Commission 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
- United States Patent and Trademark Office
- United States Copyright Office
In Addition …
- Analytics Help – Policy requirements for Google Analytics Advertising Features
- Google AdSense Program Policies Explained
- 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 presented above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress website.
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"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