Is your WordPress website legally compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking the law, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose products or services you are doing business with?
Online laws were designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to anyone who sells, markets 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 someone from taking legal action against your business.
New laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for profit, you will need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the Better Business Bureau, also referred to as the BBB. Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Better Business Bureau Website)
The introduction of these laws affect various business categories, including:
- Any kind of advertising, e.g. contextual advertising
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creators
- Bloggers
- etc.
If your website does not display certain legal pages (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account, Facebook will disapprove your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to enroll in various advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
This article explains the importance of having a legally compliant website and how to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website using simple and inexpensive methods and resources.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice in this article. As stated previously, the aim of this article is only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with federal, regional or local laws and regulations that govern your business and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of providers whose products or services you offer
Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant
Consider what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:
- A user has a cardiac arrest after they use your online fitness program.
- The skin care lotion you promote as an affiliate gives people skin rashes.
- You’ve told subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you have not informed them exactly what you plan to do with their personal details.
- Someone steals content from your website and publishes it on their own website.
- There is no statement on your site making your visitors aware that you are an affiliate for the product you’re selling that you could get paid a financial benefit if they end up buying through your link.
- You don’t spell out the conditions of your return policies.
- Online visitors claim your testimonials are fake and try to sue you because of it.
- You haven’t disclosed that you were given a free copy of the product in your review.
- Your website publishes adult content and you did not take sufficient measures to restrict access by underage persons.
Consider too these documented 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 to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer was slapped with 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, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-picked websites, more than 90% had broken at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in breach of at least 2 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 with warnings or lose access entirely to the Google program whose policies they had infringed, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how easy it is to risk being targeted for litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA or PPA Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Product Promoter
- AdSense Publisher
- Niche Publisher
- Amazon Affiliate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
It’s vitally important to make sure that your website or blog stays fully compliant with the law.
Compliance With 3rd-Party Companies - ToS, Policies, etc.
Complying with third-party companies terms and policies is important.
You are expected to let your visitors know that your website complies with all necessary legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you interact with online.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Google requires websites to display legal information if using their products and service. This includes using features such as Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Earning revenue with your online properties using Google AdSense …
(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)
And even promoting your services or products through Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you plan to sell information-based products using places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will be required to add certain legal pages to your site before they will approve your products for sale in their networks …
(Policy requirements digital product vendors using ClickBank)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you include clear disclaimers and statements to visitors, especially when concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Website Is Compliant
FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many business are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this typically 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 do any kind 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 by making sure that your site complies with all FTC regulations and guidelines.
Many online business resources provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. We provide a number of references at the end of this article …
(You must word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Don’t Forget Social Media Apps
If you plan to create apps that will integrate with your website, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with information about your 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 service providers like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote products or services on your site as an affiliate marketer, or generate revenue with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, or use 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 provide on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts terminated.
- 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, most third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
Essential Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Site To Ensure Compliance
If you suspect that your website lacks in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.
Adding the following compliance pages to your website should help keep your business out of trouble with many regulatory agencies and third-party service providers, and avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms And Conditions
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above pages, you may want to consider including one or more of the pages listed below:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you sell or promote affiliate products and services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Links Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (if your website provides general financial advice)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Audio/Video Terms (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
Adding the right type of disclosure is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Lets visitors be aware that you are not receiving any type of compensation for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Disclosure that informs your visitors that you may benefit financially if they purchase through your affiliate links.
- Sample/Review Copy – Explains to users that you have received a sample or review copy of the product by the author or developer.
- Sponsored Post – Informs site users that you have been compensated in some form to write the article.
- 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 online publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Content To Your Site
Ideally, you will have your lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this prepared, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Upload Legal Pages To Your Website
If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend creating a legals directory in your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory (e.g. via FTP) …
(Upload legal pages to your web server via FTP)
You can then easily add a link to these pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu administration …
(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)
Where To Display Legal Web Pages On Your Site
Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and clearly accessible to your visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into the sidebar (or the footer of your website or blog) so that users have access to legal information from every web page …
(Display legal information to visitors on all of your website’s pages)
For a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your sidebar menu, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
Ready-Made Legal Templates
You can find attorney-drafted disclosures and downloadable website forms and agreements by searching online, or going to websites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
Go here for more details:
Alternatively, you can download a set of cut & paste website legal templates written by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website templates were written by an attorney and 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 pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Pages include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page for each legal form you want to add to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload these to your server as described previously.
For more details, go here:
Legal Page Plugins
As well as using legal templates, you can simplify things using WordPress plugins.
Here are some great plugins for WordPress sites worth looking into:
WordPress Legal Pages
(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to bother with creating legal pages manually, then consider using WordPress Legal Pages …
This plugin is not free, but it’s a very low-priced and well-supported plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you loads of headaches.
Some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages plugin are:
- Pre-written Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- Fully Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any other WP page.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – Add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like every other WP page.
- Forced Options – Force page lockdown. Page unlocks only when users agree to your legal terms.
- New Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will appear in your main navigation section …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)
This allows you to create, view and edit legal pages from your admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites with products, review sites, e-commerce sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Create different legal page types)
Choose from several pre-configured legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Pre-configured 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 this plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin that contains over twenty customizable compliance templates for your web presence …
Learn more here:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)
Legal Suite Pro 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 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 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 less than one minute and the plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
Go here to learn more:
If using the services of lawyers to create your online legal documentation is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic form of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional assistance from a legal expert.
We want your business to be protected!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal forms, or a WordPress legal pages plugin - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator 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 we’ve previously pointed out, if you do any type of business online, you need to ensure that your site complies with regulatory agencies and any guidelines and terms of service for third-party products and services that you may be promoting or offering online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant 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, please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements in your country or region.
References And Legal Resources
Here is a time-saving list of additional sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your site 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
- US Copyright Office
And …
- 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 why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your website using simple and cost-effective solutions.
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