Is your website legally compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking the law, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose services or products you are using or recommending?
Online laws are designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to any person who markets, sells or promotes goods and services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements won’t prevent you from being slapped with a legal notice.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you promote anything on your site for material gain, then you must 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. Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – Better Business Bureau)
The introduction of these new laws affect several business activities, including:
- Any type of advertising, including Google AdWords or AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creators
- Bloggers
- etc.
If your website does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal may suspend your account, Facebook could suspend web applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote many advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
More importantly, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that your website or blog(s) are subject to certain legal requirements, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of external providers whose products or services you may be advertising on your website, and that there are solutions for WordPress that can help your website become more compliant, such as the tools listed further below.
Is Your Site Breaking The Law?
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice on this website. You must carry out your own due diligence and we recommend consulting legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all laws and regulations concerning your specific business.
Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important
Consider for a minute what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- A person has a heart attack after using your online fitness program.
- The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate marketer gives people allergic reactions.
- You’ve informed subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you have not defined what you will do with their details.
- Someone copies your content and publishes it on their site.
- There is no statement on your site letting your visitors know that you are an affiliate for the product you are promoting that you will derive a sales commission if visitors buy it.
- You have not spelled out the conditions of your refund/return policies.
- Your visitors claim your testimonials are misleading 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 content and you did not take sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged persons.
Consider also these actual case studies of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up personal information (including credit card info to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, he was also ordered to give a copy of the judgement to everyone he does business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
- A social networking app developer copped a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private details.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes Users IDs. Many internet marketers took a risk 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% had breached at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had breached at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were breaking 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 to the Google program whose policies they had violated, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how a website owner can easily be exposed to the risks of litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Product Promoter
- AdWords Advertiser
- Product Marketer
- Amazon Affiliate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
- Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online
It’s imperative to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your online business has the right legal pages and information displayed to site users.
Compliance With 3rd-Party Services
Leading online companies and government agencies that regulate trade emphasize the need of observing the terms and policies of third-party service providers.
You are expected to let your visitors know that your website complies with legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases trust and confidence in your business, it’s also a requirement of many companies you will interact with.
For example:
Google requires your site to display legal information if using their services. This includes Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Generating revenue with your sites using Google AdSense display advertising …
(Google AdSense ads - policy requirements)
Or promoting your products or services via Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you sell information products using merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will be required to add legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …
(Policy requirements for ClickBank vendors)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you display clear disclaimers and disclosures on your site, especially if you plan to use product testimonials or endorsements …
(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Website Is Compliant
New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many websites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this will most likely prompt the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute 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 is not located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by ensuring that your site complies with all FTC regulations.
A number of business resource sites provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to useful resources at the end of this article …
(Word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Don’t Forget Social Media Apps
If you are planning to develop social networking applications that integrate with your site, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others will require you to provide information about various legal pages …
(Apps for social networking sites also require compliance)
- If you are unsure whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of companies like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that 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, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or driving visitors to your site with Google AdWords, 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 - don’t risk having your accounts shut down.
- If you have been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business interests.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
Essential Legal Pages To Add To Your Website
If your web site lacks in aspects of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your site should help your website stay out of trouble with many consumer protection authorities and third-party providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):
- About Us Page
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the pages above, you may want to consider including any of these compliance pages where applicable:
- Affiliate Agreement (if you provide an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides financial content)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Video/Audio Terms Of Use (if you allow users to download media on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
It’s important to add the right types of disclosure pages to your site. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs visitors that you’re not being paid for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Notifies your readers that you may benefit financially if they purchase through affiliate links on your site.
- Sample/Review Copy – Explains to users that you have received a sample or review copy of the product or service.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets site users know that you were 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 have a lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this completed, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Uploading Legal Web Pages Manually
If someone prepares and delivers the legal content for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend creating a legal folder in your web server and uploading your legal pages to this folder (e.g. via FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your server and upload pages via FTP)
You can then easily add links to your pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu administration …
(WordPress Menu)
Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and clearly accessible to all site visitors. You can insert these into the sidebar menu (or the footer section of your website or blog) to ensure that users will be able to access the information from every page …
(It’s important to 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 sidebar menu and footer in WordPress using widgets here:
Using Ready-Made Legal Templates
You can easily find attorney-drafted downloadable internet forms and agreements just by searching online, or by visiting websites like the ones shown below:
Find Legal Forms
(FindLegalForms.com – Attorney-drafted legal forms)
Visit this website for more details:
Alternatively, you can download a set of legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages)
These templates were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with simple search and replace to add your own business name and URL, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates FTC regulations and guidelines brought into effect in 2012)
- Privacy Policy
- ToS & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page on your website 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 web server as previously described.
To learn more, go here:
Legal Pages – Plugins
In addition to using legal templates, you can keep things really simple using plugins.
Here are some great plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WP Legal Pages Plugin)
If the idea of manually creating legal pages for your website feels too time-consuming for you, then consider installing a plugin like WP Legal Pages …
This plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably low-priced and well-supported premium plugin that will help make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your site a lot easier and save you time.
Here are just some of the benefits of using the WP Legal Pages:
- Built-in Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the legal pages you will need in a few minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
- Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages like every other page on your website.
- Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your pages when published.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any WP page.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. Page unlocks only when user agrees to your legal terms.
- New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature is added to your dashboard section …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you create, view and edit legal pages from the admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, review sites, AdSense sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Page Type)
Select from various pre-written 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
To learn more about using this handy plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-driven websites and blogs with over twenty customizable compliance templates for your online business …
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Legal Suite Pro
(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 And Conditions
- 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 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. 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.
Go here for more info:
If hiring lawyers to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional legal services.
We want your business to be legally safe!
Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (it’s FREE!), or consider using one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal page templates, or plugins as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator allows you to quickly generate 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 we’ve previously pointed out, if you make money online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your site complies with regulatory agencies and any guidelines and terms of service (TOS) required by third-party sites that you may decide to promote or offer online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumer rights, 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 provide no legal advice. 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 concerning your specific business.
Additional Legal Information
Here is a useful list of additional sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your website may require 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
- Better Business Bureau – 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
- US Copyright Office
Also …
- Google 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
Hopefully, this article has helped you understand the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly add essential legal pages to your WordPress site.
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