Is your WordPress website legally compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any laws, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-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 markets, sells or promotes products and services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements will not protect someone from taking legal action against your business.
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, then you will need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the (US based) Better Business Bureau (BBB). Search online for information about “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The introduction of these new laws has legal consequences for several business activities, including:
- Any form of advertising, e.g. contextual ads
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creators
- Blogging
- etc.
If your website does not display certain legal pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank won’t let you list digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account, Facebook will suspend your applications, and you will not be allowed to promote various advertising or online merchant networks.
If your online business is not in compliance, you could 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 shows you simple methods and solutions that will make your site legally compliant.
Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice. As previously stated, the purpose of this article is to help make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with the laws that govern business practices online and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of third-party providers whose services or products you use on your website
Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant
Consider for a moment what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:
- A user suffers a heart attack after purchasing your online fitness workout.
- The skin care lotion you sell as an affiliate gives someone who purchases from your link allergic reactions.
- Your opt-in list displays a statement informing subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t described exactly what you plan to do with their personal details.
- Someone copies your content and publishes it on their site.
- You did not tell your site users that you are marketing a product as an affiliate and could receive a financial benefit if visitors buy it.
- You haven’t spelled out the conditions of your refund/return policies.
- Someone claims the testimonials on your site are misleading and decides to sue you because of it.
- You haven’t disclosed that you have received a free copy in a product review.
- Your website contains adult content and you did not take sufficient measures to keep underage persons from accessing it.
Consider now these real examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up personal information (including credit card information to complete a debt reduction offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer received 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 details.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many internet 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 breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in violation of at least two 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 they had infringed, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how easy it is to become exposed to the risks of litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA (Cost Per Action) Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Product Promoter
- AdWords Advertiser
- Info Product Marketer
- Amazon Affiliate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
It’s imperative to ensure that your digital presence stays fully compliant with the law.
Complying With Third-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.
Leading online companies and government agencies that regulate trade in most countries emphasize the need and importance of complying with the terms and policies of service providers.
You are required to let your site users know that your business complies will all laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves trust and buyer confidence in your website, it’s also a requirement of most companies you engage with online.
Here are just some examples:
Google requires your site to display certain information if using many of their products. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Making money online with your site with Google AdSense advertising …
(Google AdSense display advertising - policy requirements)
Or promoting your products or services via Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you plan to sell digital products through merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will be required to add a number of legal pages before they will approve your products for sale in their network …
(ClickBank – policy requirements for product sellers)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you include clear disclaimers and policies on your site, especially concerning the use of testimonials or product endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)
New FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Be Compliant
FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many business are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this typically results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting site owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you plan to do any kind of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by making sure that your site complies with all FTC guidelines.
A number of business resource sites provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to useful resources 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 Applications
If you plan to create apps that integrate with your website, social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others will require you to provide access to 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 organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote anything on your site as an affiliate marketer, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon 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 to avoid having your accounts shut down.
- If you’ve been wondering whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use)
What Compliance Pages Does Your Website Need To Be Safe From Legal Compliance Issues?
If you suspect that your website is lacking in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your website should help your website keep out of trouble with most regulatory agencies and external providers, and avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):
- About Us Page
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above pages, you may want to consider including one or more of these pages where applicable:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you provide information about affiliate products or services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides general financial information)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Media Terms Of Use (if you allow media downloads on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding the correct type of disclosure to your site is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Disclosure that informs visitors that you are not receiving any kind of compensation for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Lets your visitors know that you will derive some form of financial or similar kind of benefit if they act on your recommendation and purchase through one of your affiliate links.
- Sample Or review Copy – Lets users be aware that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product or service.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs your visitors that you have been compensated in some way to write the post.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs visitors that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to satisfy the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring website publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Pages To Your Site
Ideally, you should have a lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once this has been completed, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Upload Legal Pages Manually To Your Site
If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you in standard web page format (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend adding a legals directory to your server and uploading your legal pages to this directory (e.g. via FTP) …
(Upload legal pages to your server via FTP)
You can then add links to these pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …
(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)
Displaying Legal Pages On Your Website
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and clearly visible to all site visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into your sidebar menu (or place them in the footer of your site) to ensure that visitors can access legal information from all pages …
(It’s important to display legal information to visitors on all of your website’s pages)
We have created a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your WP sidebar using widgets here:
Use Legal Templates
You can find downloadable attorney-drafted disclosures and forms and agreements just by searching online, or visiting websites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms)
Visit this site to learn more:
Alternatively, you can purchase a set of cut and paste website legal templates designed by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Website Legal Pages)
These templates 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 templates included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates FTC guidelines that came into effect in 2012)
- Privacy Policy: Google & DoubleClick DART, etc.
- 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 every 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 earlier.
To learn more, visit this website:
Legal Pages – WordPress Plugins
In addition to using legal templates, you can simplify things by using plugins.
Here are some WordPress plugins worth looking into:
WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to bother with 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 plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you loads of headaches.
Some of the benefits of using WP Legal Pages plugin are:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the basic legal pages you will need in a few minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
- Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any other page on your website.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information will 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 any other WordPress page.
- Forced Options – Force page lockdown. When users agree to the legal terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
- New Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will be added to your main WP dashboard section …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)
This allows you to view, create and edit your legal pages from the admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Screen)
You can easily create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review sites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages – Page Type)
Select from several pre-configured legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Pre-configured 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 WordPress plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress sites containing over twenty customizable compliance templates for your online presence …
Go here to learn more:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(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 And Conditions
- 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 site. You can have legal pages installed and set up on your site in less than one minute and the plugin licensing is flexible, allowing you to install and use the plugin on all of your sites.
For more information, go here:
If using the services of legal experts to create your legal pages is out of your budget, then at least consider implementing some kind of basic legal protection on your website until you can afford to hire the services of a solicitor.
We want your business to be safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal page templates, or a legal pages plugin - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator allows you to easily generate necessary 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 do business online (or plan to), it’s important that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies and any terms of service and guidelines for 3rd-party services and products that you may be promoting or selling online. Your website or blog must comply with a whole set of laws and regulatory guidelines, many of which you may not 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, we are not lawyers and we provide no legal advice on this website. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.
Resources
Below is a useful list of additional sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what your website may require to remain compliant and meet 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
- Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – 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
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
- 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 why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress site using simple and cost-effective resources and plugins.
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