Is your website legal? Do you know if your site is breaking the law, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose products or services you promote or offer?
As the internet continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s vitally important that you try to stay on top of what’s happening and ensure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your online presence plays an important role in your overall business strategy.
New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you promote anything on your website 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 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 consequences for various online business categories, including:
- Any kind of advertising, like display advertising
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
Without certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t allow you to list digital products, PayPal may suspend your account, Facebook will disapprove your web applications, and you won’t be allowed into a number of advertising and online merchant networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
This guide explains the importance of having a compliant website and provides inexpensive methods to make your site compliant quickly and easily.
Does Your Site Comply With The Law?
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice. You must carry out your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with all laws regarding your specific business.
Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important
Is your business at risk? Consider what the implications to your business would be if these situations were to occur:
- A user suffers a cardiac arrest after they use your online fitness program.
- The skin care products you promote as an affiliate marketer gives a number of users allergic reactions.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you have not clearly informed them what you will do with the information you have collected.
- Someone copies your content and publishes it on their own website.
- You haven’t informed visitors that you’re an affiliate for the product you’re recommending and will receive a sales commission if visitors purchase the product through your affiliate link.
- You don’t spell out the conditions of your refund policies.
- Visitors claim your testimonials are misleading and decide to sue you.
- You haven’t disclosed in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
- Your website includes adult information and you have not taken sufficient measures to restrict access by underage persons.
Consider too the following documented examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up personal information to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer copped a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private information about children.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping Users IDs. Many internet marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independent 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, more than 90% had broken 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 notices or lose access entirely 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 through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA (Cost Per Action) Marketer
- Network Marketer
- Affiliate Promoter
- AdSense Publisher
- Product Publisher
- Amazon Affiliate
- EBay Seller
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
- Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online
It’s imperative to do whatever is necessary to make sure 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 Terms And Policies
Leading online companies and government agencies that regulate trade in most countries emphasize the importance of observing the terms and policies of 3rd-party service providers.
You must let your site users know that your business complies with laws and recommended guidelines. This not only improves trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of many companies you interact with online.
For example:
Google requires you to display certain information when using their products and service. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Earning revenue with your website with Google AdSense display advertising …
(Google AdSense policy requirements)
And even promoting your services or products through Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you plan to sell digital products with merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you will need to add certain legal pages before your products can be approved for sale in their network …
(Policy requirements for vendors selling via ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you add clear disclaimers and disclosures to visitors, especially regarding the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant
FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many websites are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As documented on their website, this often results in 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 type of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by ensuring that your website is compliant with all FTC regulations.
A number of resources online provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. See the resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(Structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Social Media Applications Also Have Compliance Requirements
If you plan to create applications that will integrate with your site, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with access to various legal pages …
(Social networking apps also require compliance)
- If you are unsure as to whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote anything online as an affiliate marketer, or generate revenue with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay ads, or driving visitors to your website with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to provide on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts shut down.
- If you’ve been wondering whether “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 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)
Essential Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Site
If your website or blog falls short in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your site should help your website stay out of trouble with many consumer protection agencies and third-party providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues):
- About Us Page
- Contact Page
- Privacy Statement
- Terms And Conditions
- Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above, you may want to look into including one or more of the following pages:
- Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you promote or sell affiliate products and services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides money-making advice)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Media Terms Of Use (e.g. if you provide users with access to downloadable videos or audio files on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
It’s important to add the right disclosure information to your website. For example:
- No Material Connection – Lets site users know that you will not receive compensation for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Lets readers be aware that you will be compensated if they act on your recommendation and buy through your affiliate link.
- Sample Or review Copy – Discloses to readers that you have received a review or sample copy of the product you’re reviewing or writing about by the author or product developer.
- Sponsored Post – Lets visitors be aware that you have been compensated in some way to write the content.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets visitors 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.
Adding Legal Pages Content To Your Site
Ideally, you should consult lawyers or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this done, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Uploading Legal 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 site, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend adding a legal directory to your server and uploading your legal pages to this directory via FTP …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your server and upload pages using FTP)
You can then add a link to your legal pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …
(WordPress Menu)
Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and display clearly to your visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into your sidebar menu (or place them in the footer of your website) to ensure that users have access to the information from all of your pages …
(Display links to legal pages to visitors on all of your website’s pages)
We have created a detailed tutorial on adding links to pages on your sidebar or footer here:
Templates
You can easily find downloadable attorney-prepared forms and agreements just by searching online, or going to sites like the ones shown below:
Find Legal Forms
To learn more, go here:
Alternatively, you can download a set of cut and paste website legal templates drafted by legal attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)
These legal templates were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a quick search and replace to add your own details, then pasted into your legal 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
- Privacy Policy: Google, DART, etc.
- Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page on your website 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 described previously.
Go here for more information:
Legal Pages – Plugins
In addition to using legal templates, another option is to use WordPress plugins.
Here are some plugins for WordPress-driven websites worth looking into:
WordPress Legal Pages
(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to spend time creating legal pages manually, then consider using a plugin like WP Legal Pages …
This plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably affordable and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will help 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 plugin are:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
- Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like every other WP page.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any page on your website.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. When a user agrees to your legal terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
- New Features – More features are being added to this plugin with every new version.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will display inside your WordPress dashboard menu …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you view, create and edit legal pages from your admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Screen)
With WP Legal Pages, you can create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, review sites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Create different legal page types)
You can also choose from a number of built-in legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Built-In 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 WordPress plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-powered websites and blogs containing over 20 customizable compliance page templates for your online business …
More info:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro For WordPress)
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 of Service
- Earnings Disclaimer
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin – 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 site. Your legal pages can be installed and set up on your site in one minute or less and the plugin licensing is flexible, allowing you to install and use the plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell).
More information:
If hiring lawyers to create your legal pages is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic form of legal protection on your site until you can afford professional assistance from a solicitor.
We want your site to be legally protected!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-written legal page templates, or a legal pages plugin - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates essential legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you do business online, you need to make sure that your site complies with regulatory agencies and any terms of service (TOS) and guidelines for third-party services and products that you may be promoting or offering online. Your internet presence must comply with a wide range of regulations, some of which you may not even be aware of.
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. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.
Additional Information
Here is a useful list of websites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your website may require to comply and meet legal obligations:
- FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- Federal Trade Commission 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
See Also …
- 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
We hope this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website using inexpensive methods and solutions.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group