Category: Management Plugins

One of the worst things that can happen to a business owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.

As the digital economy continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules constantly change, it’s vital that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if your online presence plays an important part in your business strategy.

New laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for profit, you need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau, also called the BBB. Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – BBB)

The introduction of these laws affect several business activities, including:

• Any form of advertising, like Google AdWords or AdSense
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creation
• Bloggers
• etc.

If your website does not display certain pages to visitors (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to list digital products for sale, PayPal could close down your account, Facebook could suspend web applications, and you will not be allowed to promote many advertising and affiliate merchant networks.

Plus, 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 ways to make your WordPress website or blog legally compliant in minutes.

Is Your Website Or Blog Breaking The Law?

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice. As previously stated, the aim of this article is only to make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal policies in accordance with the laws and regulations governing business practices online and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of 3rd-party companies whose services or products you offer on your website or blog

Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important

Consider for one moment 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 products you promote as an affiliate gives someone an allergic reaction.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you have not described exactly what you will do with the information you’ve collected.
• Someone steals content from your site and puts it up on their website.
• There is no statement on your website making your visitors aware that you are promoting a product as an affiliate and could get paid a sales commission if visitors purchase it.
• You haven’t spelled out the terms of your refund/return policies.
• A visitor claims your testimonials are all fake and tries to sue you because of it.
• You didn’t disclose in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your site includes adult-related information and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to keep underaged children from accessing it.

Consider now the real examples of costly compliance breaches listed below:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up their personal information to complete his offer. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, he is 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 whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private information.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping UIDs. Many marketers took a risk 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 websites picked at random, more than 90% were in violation of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had broken 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 cautions or lose access to the Google program whose policies with the infringement, 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 litigation?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA (Cost Per Action) Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Promoter
• AdWords Advertiser
• Niche Publisher
• Amazon Associate
• EBay Seller
• Adult Content Publisher
• Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
• Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online

it’s important to make sure that your online business stays legally compliant.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Companies - ToS, Policies, etc.

Complying with third-party companies terms and policies is important.

You are required to let your site visitors know that your business complies with laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves trust and buyer confidence in your website, it’s also required in many cases by most companies you will interact with.

For example:

Google requires your site to display certain information when using their services. This includes Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Generating revenue online with your blog with Google AdSense ads …

(Google AdSense display advertising - policy requirements)

Or promoting your business using Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to sell information-based products via places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you are required to add legal pages before they will approve your products for sale in their networks …

(ClickBank – policy requirements)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to display clear disclaimers and disclosures on your site, especially when concerning the use of testimonials or product endorsements …

(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business 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 often results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you plan to do any type of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. you should protect your business interests by ensuring that your website complies with all FTC regulations and guidelines.

There are many online business resources that can provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. See our additional resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(Structuring your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Don’t Forget Social Media Applications

If you are planning to create apps that will integrate with your site, you will also be required to provide sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others with information about your legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are not sure whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote products or services online via affiliate marketing, or monetizing your pages 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 display on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts suspended.
• If you have 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 third-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)

Basic Legal Pages To Add To Your Website

If you suspect that your web site lacks in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.

Adding the following legal pages to your site should help your business stay out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and 3rd-party service providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):

• About Us
• Contact Us
• Privacy Policy
• Terms And Conditions
• Disclaimers
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

In addition to the above, you may want to consider adding any of these legal pages where applicable:

• Affiliate Disclosure (if you promote or sell affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides general advice about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Media Terms Of Use (if you provide users with access to downloadable videos or audio files on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

Adding correct disclosure information is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Informs your visitors that you will not receive any form of compensation for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Discloses to your readers that you will benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and purchase through affiliate links on your site.
• Review Or Sample Copy – Lets readers be aware that you have received a sample or review copy of the product or service.
• Sponsored Post – Informs users that you have been compensated in some way to write the post.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs users 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.

Adding Legal Content To Your WordPress Website

Ideally, you should consult a lawyer or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once these have been completed, there are several ways to include them in your website.

Uploading Legal Web Pages Manually

If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you in typical web page format (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload them for you.

We recommend creating a legals folder on your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder (e.g. using FTP) …

(Upload legal pages to your server via FTP)

You can then add links to your pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …

(Custom WordPress Menu)

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are fully up-to-date and display clearly to visitors. You can add these to your sidebar menu (or place them in the footer of your website or blog) so that visitors can access the information from all of your pages …

(Display links to your legal pages on all of your site’s pages)

We have written a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your sidebar menu using widgets here:

• Using Widgets

Templates

You can find downloadable attorney-drafted forms and agreements by searching online, or by going to sites like this one:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

More information:

• Find Legal Forms

Alternatively, you can purchase a set of cut & paste website legal templates drafted by attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)

Cut & Paste website legal pages were written by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with simple search and replace to insert your own business details, then pasted into your web pages.

The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Templates include:

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates FTC regulations and guidelines brought into effect on March 2012)
• Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
• 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 WordPress page for every legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload the pages to your server as previously described.

To learn more, go here:

• Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Templates

Legal Page Plugins

As well as using cut & paste templates, another option is to use WordPress plugins.

Here are some great legal WordPress plugins that you may be interested in using:

WP Legal Pages

(WordPress Legal Pages)

If the idea of manually creating legal pages for your site feels too time-consuming for you, then consider choosing a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages instead …

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 website and save you a great deal of time and effort.

Some of the benefits of using the WordPress Legal Pages plugin are:

• Pre-written Templates – The plugin gives you access to 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 need in around 3 minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
• Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like every other page on your website.
• Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your content when published.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like every other WP page.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. Page unlocks only when the user agrees to your terms.
• Additional Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will be added to your main dashboard menu …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)

This lets you create, edit and view your legal pages from the admin area …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings Area)

With WP Legal Pages, you can create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, niche sites, Amazon sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page Type)

Select from a number of built-in legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Built-In 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 this WordPress plugin, visit this site:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-driven sites with over twenty customizable compliance pages for your website …

More info:

• Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(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 Service
• 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 have packaged high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers 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 less than one minute and the plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your websites.

Go here for more information:

• Legal Suite Pro

If using the services of lawyers to create your legal documentation is currently out of your budget, then consider at least implementing some basic form of legal protection on your website until you can afford a solicitor.

We want your website to be legally safe!

Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (it’s FREE!), or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-written legal templates, or plugins - see 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 engage in any form of business online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your site complies with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done and the guidelines and terms of service for 3rd-party services and products that you may be promoting or advertising online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect consumers, 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 offer no legal advice on our website. Do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.

Legal Resources

Below is a useful list of websites we suggest you visit to better understand what your business requires to remain compliant and meet its 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
• Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – BBB
• 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

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
• 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 presented above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your website or blog.

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