Is your website compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking any laws, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose products or services you are endorsing or selling?
As the internet continues growing at an overwhelming speed and rules keep changing, it’s vital to stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your online presence plays an important role in your business strategy.
New 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 disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(BBB – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The introduction of these laws affect various business activities, including:
- Any kind of advertising, e.g. Google AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creators
- Blogging
- etc.
If there are no legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to sell digital products, PayPal could suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will disapprove web applications, and you won’t be accepted into many advertising or online marketing networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that your website(s) may be required to comply with legal requirements, the importance of complying with the terms of service of external providers whose services or products you may be advertising online, and that there are solutions for WordPress that can help your sites become more compliant, such as the plugins listed further below.
Does Your Website Comply With The Law?
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice. As stated above, the aim of this article is to 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 3rd-party providers whose services or products you use
Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important
Consider what would happen to your business if any of the following situations were to happen:
- A customer suffers a cardiac arrest after they use your online workout program.
- The skin care lotion you promote as an affiliate marketer gives a number of users an allergic reaction.
- You’ve informed subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t defined what you will do with their personal details.
- Someone copies your content and puts it up on their own website.
- You haven’t informed your site users that you are recommending a product as an affiliate that you could receive financial benefits if visitors decide to purchase using your affiliate link.
- You didn’t spell out the terms of your refund policies.
- Your visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are all fake and decide to sue you because of it.
- You have not disclosed in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
- Your website includes adult content and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to restrict access by underage children.
Consider now the actual examples of costly compliance breaches below:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up their personal information to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, they’re now required to issue a copy of the judgement to everyone they do business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
- A social networking app developer was slapped with a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private information about children.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them 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% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had broken at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in violation of 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 cautions or lose access entirely to the Google program with the violation, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how you could easily be exposed to the risks of non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Marketer
- AdWords Advertiser
- Info Product Publisher
- Amazon Affiliate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
- Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online
it’s important to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your digital presence complies with all laws governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Complying With 3rd-Party Companies
Complying with third-party services terms and policies is important.
You are required to let your site visitors know that your website complies with laws and recommended guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also a requirement of many companies you will engage with online.
For example:
Google requires your site to display legal information if using their products and features. This includes using services like Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Making money online with your websites using Google AdSense …
(Google AdSense online advertising - policy requirements)
Or promoting your products or services via Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you sell information-based products with merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you are required to add various legal pages to your website before they will approve your products for sale …
(Policy requirements for ClickBank vendors)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you include clear disclaimers and policies to visitors, especially when concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Be Compliant
FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many sites are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As is already the case, this typically results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting site owners 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 does not operate in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by making sure that your site complies with FTC regulations and guidelines.
Various business resources provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with 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 the law)
Social Media Applications Also Require Compliance
If you plan to develop social networking applications for your site, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others require you to provide access to various legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are unsure whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of sites like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting products or services on your site via affiliate marketing, or make money online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay ads, 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 shut down.
- If you’ve been wondering whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
Basic Legal Pages To Include In Your Site To Ensure Compliance
If you suspect that your web site is lacking in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.
Adding the following compliance pages to your site will help keep you out of trouble with most regulatory authorities and third-party service providers, and avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the pages above, you may want to consider adding one or more of the following pages where applicable:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you promote or sell affiliate products or services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides advice about health or medical areas)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Audio/Video Terms Of Use (if you allow media downloads on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
Adding the correct type of disclosure to your website is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – This lets visitors be aware that you will not be receiving any kind of payment for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Discloses to your visitors that you may be compensated if they act on your recommendation and buy through your affiliate links.
- Review/Sample Copy – Lets your readers be aware that you have received a sample or review copy of the product by the author or developer.
- Sponsored Post – Discloses to site users that you were compensated in some form to write the article.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs your visitors 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 To Your Website
Ideally, you will consult your lawyer and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once this has been created, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Uploading Legal Web Pages Manually
If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you in HTML format, 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 HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory (e.g. via FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your server and upload pages using FTP)
You can then easily add a link to your legal pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu admin area …
(WordPress Menu)
Where To Display Legal Web Pages On Your Site
Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and clearly visible to all site visitors. You can insert these into the sidebar (or the footer of your website or blog) to ensure that users will be able to access the information from every web page …
(It’s important to display legal information to visitors on all of your website’s pages)
If you need help adding links to pages on your sidebar using widgets, refer to this tutorial:
Store-Bought Legal Templates
You can easily find attorney-drafted disclosures and downloadable website forms and agreements by searching online, or going to websites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
(FindLegalForms.com – Attorney-prepared legal forms)
Go here for more info:
Alternatively, you can download a set of legal templates designed by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages)
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 add your own business name and URL, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance
- Privacy Policy: Google & DoubleClick DART, etc.
- Terms of Service & Conditions of Use: with inter- & intra-page redundancy, Contra Proferentem provision, reservation of rights, and exclusive social media admonition.
You can either create a new WordPress page for every legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload these to your web server as described previously.
For more information, go here:
Legal Page Plugins
In addition to using templates, you can keep things really simple by using WordPress plugins.
Here are some plugins for WordPress-powered sites worth looking into:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WP Legal Pages)
If manually creating legal pages for your site seems too time-consuming for you, then consider installing WordPress Legal Pages …
This plugin is not free, but it’s an affordable and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you time.
Some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages are:
- Pre-written Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
- Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages like every other page on your site.
- Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your website or blog 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 check box and delete and manage these like every other WordPress page.
- Forced Options – Force page lockdown. When users agree to the legal terms, the page unlocks.
- 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 be added to your main navigation menu section …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Menu)
This allows you to create, edit and view legal pages from your admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review websites, medical sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Page Type)
You can also 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
Visit the plugin site to learn more this useful plugin:
Compliance Bar – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your website …
Learn more here:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)
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 – 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. Your legal pages can be installed and set up on your site in less than one minute and the license allows you to install and use the plugin on all of your websites (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 pages is currently out of your budget, consider implementing some basic type of legal protection on your website until you can afford a lawyer.
We want your business 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 content, or a plugin as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator lets you easily generate necessary 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, you need to ensure that your website is compliant with government legal requirements and any terms of service (TOS) and guidelines required by third-party services and products that you may decide to promote or offer online. Your website or blog must comply with a wide range of laws and regulatory guidelines, 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, we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements pertaining to your business.
Resources
Here is a useful list of additional sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what your website may require to comply and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:
- Federal Trade Commission Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- FTC 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
- US 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
- 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 add all necessary legal pages to your website or blog using simple and cost-effective solutions.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now