Is your WordPress website compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking any laws, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any companies whose products or services you are selling or endorsing?
Internet laws are designed to protect consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes products and services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements will not protect you from being slapped with a legal notice.
Recent 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 profit, then you need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the (US based) Better Business Bureau, also referred to as the BBB. Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The introduction of these laws has legal implications for various online business activities, including:
- Any type of advertising, like Google AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creation
- Bloggers
- etc.
Without certain legal pages on your web site (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 won’t let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal may suspend your account, Facebook could suspend web applications, and you won’t be accepted into many advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
Additionally, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
In this article, we look at the importance of having a compliant website and describe simple and inexpensive solutions that will make your website or blog compliant quickly and easily.
Is Your Website Or Blog Breaking Rules Or Regulations?
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice. As previously stated, the purpose of this article is to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with federal, regional or local laws that govern online business practices and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of companies whose services or products you promote on your website or blog
Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant
Consider what would happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- A customer suffers a heart attack after using your online fitness workout.
- The skin care creams you promote as an affiliate gives a number of users allergic reactions.
- Your opt-in list displays a statement informing subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t clearly spelled out what you will do with it.
- Someone copies your content and puts it up on their website.
- There is no statement on your website or blog making your site users aware that you are promoting a product as an affiliate and may earn a sales commission if they buy it.
- You don’t spell out the terms of your return policies.
- Online visitors claim the testimonials on your site are misleading and try to sue you.
- You did not disclose that you were given a free copy of a product in your review.
- Your site publishes adult content and you did not take appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged persons.
Consider too these documented examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up personal information to complete his offer. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, they’ve also been ordered to give everyone he does business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
- A social networking app developer was slapped with a whopping $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 prohibits users from scraping Users IDs. Many internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independent 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% had broken at least 2 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 to the Google program whose policies with the violation, 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 non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Marketer
- AdSense Publisher
- Product Publisher
- Amazon Associate
- EBay Seller
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
You need to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your online business complies with all laws governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Compliance With Third-Party Companies Terms And Policies
Leading online companies and government agencies that regulate trade emphasize the importance of observing the terms and policies of service providers.
You are required to let your visitors know that your website complies with all necessary laws and recommended guidelines. This not only improves trust and confidence in your website, it’s also required by most companies you will do business with online.
Here are just some examples:
Google requires your site to display certain information if using many of their products. This includes Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Monetizing your online properties with Google AdSense online advertising …
(Google AdSense ads policy requirements)
And even promoting your products using Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell information products using companies like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you are required to add certain legal pages before your products can be approved for selling via their marketplace …
(Policy requirements for selling through ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you add clear disclaimers and policies to visitors, especially if you plan to sell or promote products and services using testimonials or product endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Be Compliant
FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many websites are 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 companies for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you do any type of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by making sure that your site is compliant with all FTC regulations and guidelines.
You can find many resources online that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. See the additional references and resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(It’s important to word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Don’t Forget Social Media Apps
If you plan to develop applications for your site, social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others will require you to provide information about various legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are unsure whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of sites like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote services or products on your site via affiliate marketing, or generating revenue online with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or using 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 include on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts terminated.
- If you’ve been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use)
What Legal Information Do I Need To Add To My Website To Be Covered Against Legal Compliance Issues?
If your website lacks in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your website will keep your business out of trouble with many consumer protection authorities and third-party providers, and even help to avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):
- About Us Page
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the pages above, you may want to consider including any of the following pages:
- Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you promote or sell affiliate products and services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Linking Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (if your website provides money-making advice)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Use Of Media (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
It’s important to add the right types of disclosure pages to your website. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs users that you’re not being paid for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Discloses to your visitors that you may benefit financially if they buy through affiliate links on your site.
- Review/Sample Copy – Informs your visitors that you have received a review or sample copy of the product.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs users that you were compensated in some form to write the content.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets your 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 show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
Adding Compliance Pages To Your Site
Ideally, you should have a lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once this has been completed, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Upload Legal Pages To Your Site
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 these pages for you.
We recommend adding a legal directory to your server and uploading your legal pages to this directory using FTP …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your server and upload pages via FTP)
You can then easily add links to these pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu feature …
(WordPress Menu)
Displaying Legal Pages On Your Website
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept 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 or blog) to ensure that visitors have access to the information from every page …
(Display legal information to users on all of your website’s pages)
To learn more about adding links to pages on your WP sidebar using widgets, refer to this tutorial:
Using Store-Bought Templates
You can find attorney-drafted disclosures and downloadable forms and agreements by searching online, or visiting websites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
Go here for more information:
Another option is to purchase a set of cut & paste legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – 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 insert your own business name and URL, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Forms include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates FTC guidelines that came into effect in March 2012)
- Privacy Policy
- 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 every legal form you want to add to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload the pages to your server as previously described.
Go here for more information:
Legal Page Plugins
As well as using templates, another option for adding legal pages to your website is to use plugins.
Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress users that you should check out:
WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to bother with creating legal web pages manually, then consider using a plugin like WP Legal Pages instead …
This is not a free plugin, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you many headaches.
Some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages plugin are:
- Built-in Legal Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
- Very 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. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any WordPress page.
- Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your 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 any page on your site.
- Forced Options – Force page lockdown. Page unlocks and can be accessed only when the user agrees to your terms.
- Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will appear in your navigation area …
(WP Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)
This allows you to create, view and edit legal pages from the admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Screen)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review sites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages – Create different legal pages)
Choose from several built-in legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – 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 useful plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
The Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your digital business …
Learn more here:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)
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 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 very flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your websites.
More information:
If hiring lawyers to create your legal pages is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic kind of legal protection on your site until you can afford legal services.
We want your site to be legally protected!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-drafted legal templates, or a WordPress plugin as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator Software allows you to quickly generate basic legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you are making money online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your site stays compliant with regulatory agencies and any terms of service and guidelines required by third-party services and products that you may decide to promote or advertise online. Your website must comply with a wide range of regulations, some 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, we are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice on our website. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements concerning your specific business.
Additional Legal Information
Here is a time-saving list of additional sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what your business requires to stay compliant and meet 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
- Better Business Bureau
- 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
- 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 this article has helped you understand the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your website or blog.
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