Is your website legally compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any rules or regulations, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose services or products you are doing business with?
As the digital way of life continues growing at such a rapid pace and rules keep changing, it’s vital that you stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your digital presence plays an important part in your business strategy.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate 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 disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the 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)
These laws affect several business activities, including:
- Any form of advertising, like Google AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not allow you to list digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account, Facebook could disapprove your applications, and you will not be accepted into a number of advertising or online merchant networks.
If your website is not compliant, you could also face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
This guide explains why it’s important to have a compliant website and how to quickly add legal pages to your website or blog.
Does Your Website Comply With The Law?
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice about your website or business. 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 wherever you do business.
Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant
Are you at risk? Consider for a moment what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:
- Someone has a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness program.
- The skin care products you promote as an affiliate gives people allergic reactions.
- Your opt-in list provides a statement letting subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t spelled out exactly what you’ll do with the details you have collected.
- Someone copies content from your website and publishes it on their own website.
- There is no statement on your site telling your site users that you are an affiliate for the product you’re recommending and will receive financial benefits if visitors end up purchasing via your affiliate link.
- You did not spell out the conditions of your refund/return policies.
- Visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are false and decide to sue you.
- You didn’t disclose in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
- Your website publishes adult-related content and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to restrict access by underage children.
Consider also these real examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up their personal information (including credit card details to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, he was also ordered 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 was slapped with a massive $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 does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen 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 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 with the infringement, 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 risk of non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA, CPC or PPA Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Promoter
- AdSense Publisher
- Niche Marketer
- Amazon Associate
- EBay Seller
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
It’s vitally important to make sure that your website complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Compliance With Third-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.
Leading online companies and government regulatory agencies emphasize the need and importance of observing the terms and policies of service providers.
You must let your visitors know that your business complies will all laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you engage with.
For example:
Google requires you to display legal information if using many of their products. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Generating revenue with your websites with Google AdSense ads …
(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)
And even promoting your services via Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell products online via merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will be required to add certain legal pages to your site before they will approve your products for sale …
(Policy requirements for ClickBank product vendors)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to include clear disclaimers and statements to visitors, especially if you plan to use product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Comply
FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many sites are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has already been the case, this often ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting website owners 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 does not operate in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by making sure that your site is compliant with FTC guidelines.
A number of online business resources provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. See the additional references and useful resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(Word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Don’t Forget Social Media Applications
If you plan to develop applications for your site, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with access to various legal pages …
(Social networking apps also require compliance)
- If you are not sure whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of service providers like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote anything online as an affiliate marketer, or make money online with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or driving visitors to your site using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to include on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts shut down.
- If you have ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
Basic Legal Pages To Add To Your Site
If you suspect that your website or blog is lacking in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your site will keep you out of trouble with most regulatory agencies and 3rd-party service providers, and even help you avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms And Conditions
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the pages above, you may want to consider implementing one or more of these compliance pages:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you sell or promote affiliate products or services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Linking Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides advice about financial areas or income opportunities)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Media Terms (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding correct disclosure information to your website is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – This lets visitors know that you are not being paid for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Lets users know that you may benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and buy through affiliate links on your site.
- Sample Or review Copy – Lets your visitors know that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets your visitors know that you have been compensated in some way to write the content.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs readers 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 Pages To Your WordPress Website
Ideally, you should consult lawyers or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once these have been done, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Upload Legal Pages Manually
If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend adding a legal folder to your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory (e.g. via FTP) …
(Upload legal pages to your server via FTP)
You can then easily add a link to these pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu feature …
(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)
Displaying Legal Pages On Your Website
Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and clearly visible to all visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into the WordPress sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your website) to ensure that visitors have access to the information from all pages …
(Display links to your legal pages to users on all of your website’s pages)
We have created a detailed tutorial about displaying links to pages on your sidebar using widgets here:
Templates
You can easily find attorney-prepared downloadable website forms and agreements by searching online, or going to sites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms)
More information:
Alternatively, you can purchase a set of cut & paste legal templates drafted by legal attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages)
These templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with a quick search and replace to insert your own business details, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Form Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates FTC regulations and guidelines brought into effect in March 2012)
- Privacy Policy: Google & DoubleClick DART, etc.
- Terms of Service (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 page on your website for every legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload the pages to your web server as described earlier.
For more details, visit this site:
Legal Pages – Plugins
In addition to using cut & paste templates, you can simplify things by using a plugin.
Here are some great plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:
WP Legal Pages
(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to bother with creating legal web pages manually, then consider using a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages …
The WP Legal Pages 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 much easier and save you a great deal of time and effort.
Some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages are:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal 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 clicks of the mouse.
- Fully Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Editable Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any WP page.
- Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any page on your site.
- Forced Options – Force page lockdown. Page unlocks and can be accessed when users agree to your terms.
- New Features – More features get added to this plugin with every new version.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will display inside your navigation menu section …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)
This allows you to create, view and edit your legal pages from the admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings)
With WP Legal Pages, you have the option of creating legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites, review websites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page type menu)
Select from several built-in legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – 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 powerful plugin, visit this website:
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users with over 20 customizable compliance page templates for your online business …
For more details go here:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro)
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 have packaged high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers 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 less than one minute and the license allows you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
To learn more, go here:
If hiring lawyers to create your online legal documentation is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic type of legal protection on your site until you can afford to hire the services of a lawyer.
We want your business to be legally protected!
Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (it’s FREE!), or choose 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)
Legal Pages Generator quickly generates basic 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 are making money online, you need to make sure that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies and any guidelines and terms of service required by 3rd-party products and services that you may decide to promote or recommend online. Your digital presence must comply with a whole range of laws and regulatory guidelines, 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?
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice here. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website fully complies with the law pertaining to your business.
Additional Legal Information
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 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
- 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 …
- 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
Hopefully, this article has helped you understand the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add essential legal pages to your site.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)