As a website owner, you do not want to find yourself on the wrong side of the law.
Internet laws are designed to protect 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 you from being slapped with a legal notice.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you promote anything on your website for profit, you will need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the (US based) 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)
The introduction of these laws has legal ramifications for several business categories, including:
- Any form of advertising, like Google AdWords or AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creators
- Bloggers
- etc.
If your site does not display certain pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank will not allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal may suspend your account, Facebook will reject your web applications, and you will not be allowed to participate in various advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
In addition, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
In this guide, we discuss why it’s important to have a compliant website and how to quickly add legal pages to your website or blog.
Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice about your website or business. You must carry out your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law in your country or region.
Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important
Consider what could happen to your business if any of the scenarios below were to occur:
- A customer suffers a heart attack after purchasing your online workout program.
- The skin cream you promote as an affiliate gives people allergic reactions.
- Your opt-in list displays a statement letting subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you have not clearly informed them what you’ll do with their personal details.
- Someone copies content from your website and puts it up on their own website.
- There is no statement on your website or blog letting your site visitors know that you’re an affiliate for the product you are selling that you will get paid financial benefits if visitors buy via your link.
- You did not spell out the terms of your refund policies.
- A visitor claims the testimonials on your site are false and decides to sue you as a result.
- You have not disclosed that you were given a free copy of a product you are reviewing.
- Your website includes adult-related information and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged persons.
Consider now these documented 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 info to complete his offer. 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 information.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape Users IDs. Many internet 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% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in violation of 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 cautions or lose access to the Google program they had violated, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how you could become exposed to the risk of non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- Network Marketer
- Affiliate Marketer
- AdWords Advertiser
- Info Product Marketer
- Amazon Associate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
- Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online
It’s vitally important to make sure that your digital presence complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Compliance With Third-Party Companies - ToS, Policies, etc.
Compliance with 3rd-party companies terms and policies is important.
You must let your site visitors know that your website complies with laws and recommended guidelines. This not only improves trust and buyer confidence in your website, it’s also a requirement of most companies you will interact with online.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Google requires you to display legal information when using many of their services. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Monetizing your website with Google AdSense advertising …
(Google AdSense ads policy requirements)
Or promoting your services or products through Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you plan to sell digital products via companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will need to add legal pages to your website before your products can be approved for sale …
(ClickBank – policy requirements for sellers)
The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you include clear disclaimers and policies on your website, especially concerning the use of testimonials or product endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Website Is Compliant
FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many websites are 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 money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by ensuring that your site is compliant with all FTC regulations and guidelines.
There are many online resources that can provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. See the additional references and resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(Wording your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Social Media Apps - Don’t Forget These
If you are planning to develop apps that integrate with your site, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others will require you to provide information about your legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are not sure whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote anything online using affiliate marketing, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or using Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to display on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts shut down.
- If you’ve been wondering whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)
Essential Legal Pages You Should Include In Your Website To Ensure Compliance
If your website or blog is lacking in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.
Adding the following compliance pages to your site will keep your business out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and external service providers, and even help to avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Page
- Privacy Policy
- Terms & Conditions
- Website Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the pages above, you may want to consider including one or more of the following pages where applicable:
- 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 content about financial areas or income opportunities)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Media Terms Of Use (e.g. if you provide users with access to download media on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
Adding correct disclosure information to your site is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs users that you are not being paid for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Disclosure that informs site users that you will benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and purchase through one of your affiliate links.
- Review/Sample Copy – Lets visitors be aware that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product or service you’re reviewing or writing about.
- Sponsored Post – Informs readers that you have been compensated in some way to write the article.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets readers know that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to satisfy 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 Content To Your Site
Ideally, you should consult a lawyer or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once this has been done, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Upload Legal Pages Manually To Your Website
If someone prepares and delivers the legal content 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 server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory (e.g. via FTP) …
(Upload legal pages to your web server using FTP)
You can then add links to these legal pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …
(WordPress Menu)
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are fully up-to-date and clearly accessible to all site visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your sidebar menu (or the footer section of your website) to ensure that visitors have access to the information from all of your pages …
(It’s important to display legal information to visitors on all of your site’s pages)
We have written a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your sidebar and footer using widgets here:
Store-Bought Legal Templates
You can easily find downloadable attorney-drafted internet forms and agreements just by searching online, or by visiting sites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
(FindLegalForms.com – Legal forms)
Go here for more info:
Another option is to download a set of legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Scott Talbert’s Legal Templates)
These legal templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with a simple quick search and replace to insert your own business name and URL, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Form Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates Federal Trade Commission regulations and guidelines brought into effect on March 2012)
- Privacy Policy: Google & DoubleClick DART, etc.
- ToS & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page for every legal form you want to add to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload the pages to your server as described earlier.
Go here for more information:
Legal Pages – Plugins
As well as using cut & paste templates, another option for adding legal pages to your site is to use a plugin.
Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:
WP Legal Pages
(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to spend time creating legal web pages manually, then consider installing a plugin like WP Legal Pages …
This plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you a great deal of time and effort.
Some of the benefits of using WordPress Legal Pages plugin are:
- Built-in Templates – 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 just a few clicks of the mouse.
- Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Editable Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages just like any other page on your site.
- Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when published.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other WP page.
- Forced Options – Force page lockdown. When the user agrees to the legal terms, the page unlocks.
- Additional Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item is added to your main WordPress dashboard section …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you create, edit and view legal pages from the admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Area)
The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, affiliate websites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Type of Site menu)
Select from several pre-configured legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – 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
To learn more about using this handy plugin, visit this website:
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-powered websites and blogs containing over twenty customizable compliance page templates for your online presence …
For more details go here:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(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 And Conditions
- 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 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 one minute or less and the license allows you to install and use the plugin on all of your websites.
For more information, go here:
If using the services of lawyers to create your legal pages is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional assistance.
We want your business to be protected!
Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (it’s FREE!), or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-written legal forms, or plugins - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator allows you to quickly generate basic legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, 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, you need to ensure that your site remains compliant with all laws and regulations and the terms of service and guidelines provided by third-party products and services that you may be promoting or using online. Your website or blog must comply with a whole set of regulations, some of which you may not even 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?
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we provide 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 the law concerning your specific business.
Additional Legal Information
Here is a useful list of additional sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what your business requires to comply and meet its legal obligations:
- Federal Trade Commission 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 – BBB
- 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
Additionally …
- 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
- 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 why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add legal pages to your website.
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