Is your WordPress website compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking any rules or regulations, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose products or services you are recommending or selling?
As the internet continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vitally important that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your web presence is important in the success of your business strategy.
New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you promote anything on your site for profit, you must follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the Better Business Bureau, also referred to as the BBB. Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Better Business Bureau Website)
The introduction of new laws has implications for several online business activities, including:
- Any kind of advertising, including inline advertising, Google Adsense, etc.
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creators
- Bloggers
- etc.
Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to list digital products, PayPal could suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will disapprove your applications, and you won’t be accepted into many advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
If your website is not in compliance, you could face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
The purpose of this article is to help make you aware that your website(s) are required to comply with certain legalities, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose services or products you may be offering online, and that there are easy solutions that can help your online properties become compliant, such as the tools discussed further below.
Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. As previously stated, the aim of this article is only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with the laws and regulations governing online business practices and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of providers whose services or products you advertise on your website
Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important
Are you at risk? Consider for one moment what would happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- Someone suffers a cardiac arrest after they use your online workout program.
- The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate gives someone who purchases from your link allergic reactions.
- Your opt-in list provides a statement informing prospective subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you have not clearly spelled out what you plan to do with their personal details.
- Someone steals content from your website and publishes it on their own website.
- There is no statement on your website telling your site users that you are recommending a product as an affiliate and may earn a sales commission if visitors buy it.
- You haven’t spelled out the terms of your refund policies.
- Online visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are misleading and try to sue you.
- You haven’t disclosed that you received a free copy of the product you are reviewing.
- Your website includes adult-related information and you did not take sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged persons.
Consider also the actual examples of costly compliance breaches below:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up their personal information to complete an offer they were promoting. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer copped 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 prohibits users from scraping UIDs. Many marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independent 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-picked websites, 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% had breached 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 with the infringement, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how a business owner can easily become exposed to the risks of non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Product Promoter
- AdSense Publisher
- Product Marketer
- Amazon Affiliate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product
You need to ensure that your website has the right legal pages and clearly displayed to all you site visitors.
Compliance With Third-Party Companies - ToS, Policies, etc.
All of the big companies and government agencies that regulate trade emphasize the importance of complying with the terms and policies of 3rd-party service providers.
You are required to let your site visitors know that your website complies with all necessary legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only improves trust and confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of many companies you interact with online.
Here are just some examples:
Google requires your site to display legal information if using their products. This includes Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Making money online with your online properties using Google AdSense ads …
(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)
Or promoting your services through Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell digital products through merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will need to add certain legal pages before your products can be approved for sale …
(Policy requirements product vendors selling through ClickBank)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you display clear disclaimers and policies to visitors, especially when concerning the use of testimonials or product endorsements …
(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Be Compliant
New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many websites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has already been the case, this will most likely prompt the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you plan to do any type of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. you should protect your business interests by ensuring that your site complies with FTC regulations and guidelines.
There are many resources online that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. See our additional resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(It’s important to word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Don’t Forget Social Media Applications
If you are planning to create social networking applications that integrate with your website, social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others require you to provide information about various legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are not sure whether you are 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 are considering promoting services or products on your site using affiliate marketing, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon 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 need to display 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 if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)
What Legal Information Should You Add To Your Site To Be Compliant?
If you suspect that your web site lacks in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.
Adding the following legal pages to your site will help keep you out of trouble with many consumer protection authorities and external service providers, and avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us Page
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms & Conditions
- Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to consider adding any of the pages listed below where applicable:
- Affiliate Agreement (if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Linking Policy
- Health Disclaimers (if your website provides general content about health or medical areas)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Use Of Media (e.g. if you provide users with access to videos or audio files on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
It’s important to add correct disclosures to your website. For example:
- No Material Connection – Disclosure that informs visitors that you are not receiving compensation for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Informs your visitors that you may derive some form of financial benefit if they act on your recommendation and buy through an affiliate link.
- Sample/Review Copy – Explains to your readers that you have received a sample or review copy of the product or service by the author or developer.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs your readers that you have been compensated in some form to write the article.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs visitors 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 show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Compliance Pages To Your Site
Ideally, you should have your lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this completed, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Uploading Legal Web Pages Manually To Your Site
If someone prepares and delivers the legal content for you in typical web page formatting (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend adding a legal folder to your server and uploading your legal pages to this folder using FTP …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your server and upload pages using FTP)
You can then add links to these legal pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …
(WordPress Menu)
Where To Display Legal Pages On Your Site
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and display clearly 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) so that visitors can access legal information from every page …
(It’s important to display links to legal pages to users on all of your site’s pages)
We have written a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your sidebar or footer here:
Use Legal Templates
You can find attorney-drafted downloadable forms and agreements just by searching online, or by going to sites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
To learn more, visit this website:
Another option is to download a package of legal templates written by attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages)
These legal templates were written by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with search and replace to insert your own details, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Forms include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates Federal Trade Commission guidelines that came into effect on March 2012)
- Privacy Policy
- 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 for each legal form you want added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload the pages to your web server as previously described.
To learn more, visit this site:
Legal Pages – Plugins
As well as using templates, another option for adding legal pages to your website is to use WordPress plugins.
Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress users you should check out:
WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)
If the idea of setting up legal pages manually seems too time-consuming for you, then consider using WordPress Legal Pages …
WordPress Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a very low-priced and well-supported plugin that will help make the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site a lot easier and save you loads of headaches.
Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages:
- Built-in Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and easily 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 other WordPress page.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – Add shortcodes to your pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like every other WordPress page.
- Forced Options – Force page lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed only when users agree to your legal terms.
- New Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will appear inside your main navigation area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you create, edit and view legal pages from your admin area …
(WP Legal Pages – Settings)
You can easily create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, niche websites, AdSense sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page Type)
Choose from a number of pre-written 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 useful plugin, visit the plugin website:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin with over twenty customizable legal page templates for your digital business …
Learn more here:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro)
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 – 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. You can have legal pages installed and set up on your site in one minute or less and the plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use the plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
Go here for more info:
If using the services of lawyers to create your online legal documentation is currently out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic type of legal protection on your site until you can afford professional assistance from a legal firm.
We want your business to be legally safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal forms, or plugins as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator quickly generates basic legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
***
As we’ve previously pointed out, if you make money online, it’s important that your website stays compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices and any guidelines and terms of service of 3rd-party products and services that you may be promoting or selling online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect the rights of 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?
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
Additional Information
Here is a time-saving list of additional sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your website may require to comply and meet legal obligations:
- Federal Trade Commission Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- FTC 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
- United States Patent and Trademark Office
- United States Copyright Office
Also …
- 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
- 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 compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add essential legal pages to your WordPress website or blog using simple and cost-effective legal resources and solutions.
***
"I love the way your email series "Infinite Web Content Creation Training Series" is documented and presented. It is very absorbing and captivating. The links and tutorials are interesting and educational. This has motivated me to rewrite my content following the concepts I am learning from the email series." - Mani Raju, www.fortuneinewaste.com