Is your website legally compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking any laws, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any companies whose products or services you are doing business with?
Internet laws, regulations, and guidelines were designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to anyone who sells, markets or promotes products or services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements will not excuse someone from taking legal action against you.
New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for material gain, you will need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau, also known as BBB. Do a search online for “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 new laws has legal implications for several online business categories, including:
- Any type of advertising, including display advertising
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to sell digital products, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend web applications, and you will not be allowed to participate in most advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
The purpose of this article is to help make you aware that your site may be required to comply with legal requirements according to laws that govern online businesses, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of other providers whose services or products you may be recommending on your site, and that there are plugin-based solutions for WordPress that can help your websites become fully compliant, such as the plugins listed further below.
Is Your Site Compliant?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all laws and regulations wherever your business is located.
The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant
Is your business at risk? Consider what would happen to your business if these situations were to occur:
- Someone suffers a heart attack after using your online fitness workout.
- The skin care lotion you promote as an affiliate marketer gives someone an adverse reaction.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you have not described exactly what you’ll do with their details.
- Someone steals content from your website and publishes it on their site.
- There is no statement on your site letting visitors know that you are recommending a product as an affiliate and may receive an affiliate commission if visitors end up buying via your link.
- You did not spell out the terms and conditions of your refund or return policies.
- Someone claims the testimonials on your site are all fake and decides to sue you as a result.
- You did not disclose that you were given a free copy in a product review.
- Your website contains adult-related information and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to keep underage children from accessing it.
Consider also the documented case studies of costly compliance breaches listed below:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required 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 he does business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
- A social networking app developer copped a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing private details about children.
- 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 $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% had breached at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in breach 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 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 you could become exposed to the risks of litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Promoter
- AdSense Publisher
- Info Product Marketer
- Amazon Affiliate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
- Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online
it’s important to ensure that your digital presence complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Complying With Third-Party Services
Complying with third-party companies terms and policies is important.
You are obligated to let your visitors know that your business complies will all legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only improves trust and confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of most companies you will interact with.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Google requires your site to display certain information when using many of their products. This includes Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Generating revenue with your blog with Google AdSense advertising …
(Google AdSense policy requirements)
Or promoting your site through Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you plan to sell information-based products through places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will need to add various legal pages before your products can be approved for selling via their network …
(Policy requirements for ClickBank digital product vendors)
The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you add clear disclaimers and disclosures to visitors, especially concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Site Is Compliant
New FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many websites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As documented on their website, this often prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute site owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you 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. it’s best to protect your business interests by making sure that your website is compliant with all FTC regulations and guidelines.
There are many business resources that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to 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 plan to create applications that will integrate with your website, sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others require you to provide access to your legal pages …
(Facebook apps also require compliance)
- If you are not sure whether you may be 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 anything online using affiliate marketing, or generate revenue 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 provide on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
- If you’ve been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to act now and 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 policies and guidelines)
Essential Legal Pages You Should Include In Your Site
If you suspect that your web site is falling short in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your website will help keep your business out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and external service providers, and avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “takedown” notices):
- About Us Page
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to look into implementing one or more of the pages listed below where applicable:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you promote or sell affiliate products or services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Links Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides general money-making information)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Media Terms (e.g. if you allow users to download videos or audio files on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding the right type of disclosure to your website is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Lets visitors be aware that you will not receive any type of compensation for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Lets site users know that you may benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and buy through your affiliate link.
- Sample/Review Copy – Discloses to readers that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product.
- Sponsored Post – Lets readers be aware that you have been compensated in some form to write the post.
- 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 display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site
Ideally, you will consult lawyers and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this prepared, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Uploading Legal Web Pages To Your Website
If someone prepares the legal content for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend creating a legals directory on your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder via FTP …
(Upload legal pages to your web server via FTP)
You can then easily add links to your legal pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …
(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)
Where To Display Legal Pages On Your Website
Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and clearly accessible to your visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your WordPress sidebar (or the footer section of your site) to ensure that users will be able to access legal information from every web page …
(Display links to your legal information on all of your site’s pages)
To learn more about adding links to pages on your sidebar using widgets, see this step-by-step tutorial:
Templates
You can find attorney-drafted disclosures and downloadable internet forms and agreements just by searching online, or by visiting websites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms)
More information:
Another option is to purchase a package 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 pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a simple quick search and replace to insert your own details, then pasted into your pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Pages include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates new FTC guidelines brought into effect in 2012)
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service (ToS) & 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 page for each 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 server as described earlier.
More information:
Legal Pages – Plugins
In addition to using templates, you can simplify things by using a plugin.
Here are some plugins for WordPress-driven websites and blogs worth looking into:
WP Legal Pages
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)
If you don’t want to spend time creating legal pages manually, then consider choosing WordPress Legal Pages …
WP Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you a great deal of time and effort.
Some of the benefits of using the WP Legal Pages plugin are:
- Built-in Legal Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
- Fully Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Editable Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like any other WordPress page.
- Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information is then 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 any other WordPress page.
- Forced Options – Force page lock down. Page unlocks only when users agree to your legal terms.
- Additional Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will appear inside your main navigation menu …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Menu)
This lets you create, view and edit your legal pages from your admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings)
You can easily create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, affiliate websites, medical sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Type of Site drop down menu)
Choose from a number of pre-configured legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – 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 to learn more this great plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Compliance Plugin
total website compliance & disclaimer solution …
Learn more 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 Service
- 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 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 (even sites that you decide to sell).
Go here to learn more:
If hiring a lawyer to create your legal pages is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic form of legal protection on your website until you can afford legal services.
We want your business to be legally protected!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal page templates, or plugins - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator lets you quickly generate basic legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you do business online, it’s important that your website is compliant with all government regulations and any terms of service (TOS) and guidelines of third-party sites that you may decide to promote or endorse online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended 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?
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
Legal Resources
Here is a time-saving list of websites we suggest you visit to better understand what your business requires to stay compliant and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:
- FTC 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
- US Patent and Trademark Office
- United States Copyright Office
And …
- 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
- 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 add essential legal pages to your WordPress website.
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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)