Is your website compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking any laws, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose products or services you are advertising or endorsing?
As the internet continues to grow at breakneck speed and rules constantly change, it’s absolutely essential to try and stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if your web presence plays an important part in your overall business strategy.
New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you promote anything on your website for material gain, then you will need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the (US based) Better Business Bureau, also referred to as BBB. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Better Business Bureau Website)
The introduction of these laws affect several business categories, including:
- Any form of advertising, e.g. Google AdWords
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to list digital products for sale, PayPal may suspend your account, Facebook will suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote many advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.
In this guide, we look at why it’s important to have a legally compliant website and explain simple and cost-effective resources and solutions that will make your WordPress website legally compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer 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 policies in accordance with the laws governing your business and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose services or products you recommend on your website or blog
The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant
Is your business at risk? Consider what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:
- A customer suffers a heart attack after they use your online fitness workout.
- The skin care lotion you promote as an affiliate marketer gives someone an allergic reaction.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t spelled out exactly what you’ll do with the information you have collected.
- Someone copies content from your site and puts it up on their site.
- You haven’t informed your visitors that you are an affiliate for the product you’re marketing that you could earn financial benefits if visitors buy it.
- You didn’t spell out the conditions of your refund/return policies.
- Visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are fake and decide 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 information and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to keep underaged children from accessing it.
Consider now the following real examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up their personal information to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, they’ve also been ordered to issue everyone they do business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
- A social networking app developer copped 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 UIDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, more than 90% had breached at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking at least two 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 notices 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 you could become exposed to the risk of litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA Marketer
- Network Marketer
- Affiliate Promoter
- AdWords User
- Product Publisher
- Amazon Associate
- EBay Seller
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
- Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product
It’s vitally important to ensure that your online business is fully compliant with the law.
Compliance With 3rd-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.
Big companies and government regulatory agencies emphasize the need and importance of complying with 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 increases trust and confidence in your website, it’s also a requirement of many companies you do business with online.
Here are just some examples:
Google requires you to display legal information if using many of their products. This includes using features like Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Earning revenue with your website with Google AdSense …
(Google AdSense ads policy requirements)
And even promoting your products using Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you plan to sell digital products with places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will be required to add various legal pages before your products are approved for sale …
(Policy requirements for using ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you include clear disclaimers and policy statements on your website, especially when using product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)
New FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Be Compliant
FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many sites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been the case, this often ends up with 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 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. we strongly recommend protecting your business by making sure that your website is compliant with all FTC guidelines.
There are many business resources that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references at the end of this article …
(Wording your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Social Media Applications - Don’t Forget These
If you are planning to create social networking applications that integrate with your site, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others require you to provide information about your legal pages …
(Social networking apps also require compliance)
- If you are unsure as to 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 are considering promoting anything online via affiliate marketing, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or driving visitors to your website with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to include on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts shut down.
- If you have been wondering 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 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies)
What Compliance Pages Do You Need To Add To Your Website To Be Compliant?
If your website is lacking in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.
Adding the following compliance pages to your site will keep you out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and external providers, and avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Page
- Privacy Policy
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to consider adding one or more of these pages where applicable:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you sell or promote affiliate products or services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Linking Policy
- Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides general information about health or medical areas)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Use Of Media (e.g. if you allow users to download media on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding the right web content disclosure information is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – This lets your visitors be aware that you will not receive any kind of compensation for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Disclosure that informs readers that you will receive compensation if they purchase through one of your affiliate links.
- Sample Or review Copy – Lets your visitors be aware that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product or service you’re reviewing by the author or developer.
- Sponsored Post – Lets users know that you have been compensated in some way to write the article.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets users 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 show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Pages Content To Your Website
Ideally, you should consult a lawyer and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once these have been completed, 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 in typical web page formatting (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your web server, 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 (e.g. using FTP) …
(Upload legal pages to your web server via FTP)
You can then add a link to your legal pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu admin area …
(WordPress Menu)
Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and clearly visible to all visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into the WordPress sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your website) so that users have access to the information from all your pages …
(Display links to legal pages to users on all of your website’s pages)
If you need help adding links to pages on your sidebar and footer using widgets, refer to this tutorial:
Legal Templates
You can easily find downloadable attorney-prepared forms and agreements by searching online, or visiting websites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
(FindLegalForms.com – Legal forms)
Go here for more information:
Alternatively, you can download a set of website legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages)
These legal pages were written by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a quick search and replace to insert your own business details, then pasted into your pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates FTC guidelines brought into effect in March 2012)
- Privacy Policy: Google, DART, etc.
- ToS & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page for each legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your web server as previously described.
More information:
WordPress Legal Plugins
In addition to using copy & paste legal templates, you can simplify things by using WordPress plugins.
Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:
WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to bother with creating legal pages manually, then consider choosing a plugin like WP Legal Pages …
WordPress Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a reasonably low-priced and well-supported plugin that will help make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site a lot easier and save you time.
Some of the benefits of using the WP Legal Pages plugin are:
- Pre-written Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the basic legal pages you need in a few minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
- Fully Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Editable Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like any page on your website.
- Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other page on your website.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. When users agree to the terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
- Additional Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will display inside your dashboard menu …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Menu)
This lets you create, view and edit your legal pages from the admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, niche sites, AdSense sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages – Type of Site dropdown menu)
Choose from several pre-configured 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 for more details about this powerful plugin:
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
total website compliance & disclaimer solution …
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress)
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 Use
- 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 sites.
Go here for more details:
If using the services of lawyers to create your legal documentation is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic form of legal protection on your site until you can afford legal services.
We want your business to be safe!
Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (for FREE!), or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal content, or a legal pages plugin - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates essential legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you do business online (or are planning to), you need to ensure that your site remains compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online and any terms of service (TOS) and guidelines required by third-party products and services that you may decide to promote or use online. If your website doesn’t comply 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. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
Additional Legal Information
Here is a useful list of additional sites we suggest you visit to better understand what your website may require to stay compliant and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:
- FTC 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 …
- 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
- 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 the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your site.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)