One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to break the law.
As the internet continues to grow at such a rapid pace and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s vital to stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains compliant, especially if having a digital presence is important in the success of your business strategy.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites 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 agencies, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau (BBB). Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – Better Business Bureau)
These laws has implications for various business activities, including:
- Any type of advertising, like contextual advertising
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creation
- Bloggers
- etc.
If your site does not display certain pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank will not allow you to list digital products, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will reject your web applications, and you will not be accepted into a number of advertising and online merchant networks.
If your online business is not in compliance, you could also face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
This guide explains the importance of having a legally compliant website and describes simple resources and solutions that will help make your WordPress website or blog legally compliant.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice about your website or business. You must carry out your own due diligence and we recommend consulting a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all laws and regulations wherever your business is based.
Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant
Consider what the implications to your business would be if the following situations were to take place:
- A customer has a cardiac arrest after using your online workout program.
- The skin care products you sell as an affiliate gives people skin rashes.
- Your opt-in list provides a statement informing subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you have not informed them exactly what you will do with it.
- Someone copies your content and publishes it on their own website.
- There is no statement on your website letting your visitors know that you’re an affiliate for the product you are promoting that you may earn a financial benefit if visitors buy products via your affiliate link.
- You haven’t spelled out the conditions of your refund policies.
- Visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are all fake and decide to sue you because of it.
- You haven’t disclosed in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
- Your site contains adult information and you didn’t take appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged children.
Consider now these documented 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. 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 children’s private details.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape Users IDs. Many marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of dollars 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% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had breached 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 with warnings 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 easy it is to risk being a target of litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Marketer
- AdSense Publisher
- Product Publisher
- Amazon Associate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
- Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online
You need 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 Companies Terms And Policies
Leading online companies and government trade regulatory agencies emphasize the need and importance of observing the terms and policies of 3rd-party service providers.
You must let your site visitors know that your business complies with all necessary legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also required in many cases by most companies you will do business with.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Google requires websites to display legal information when using many of their services. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Making money online with your WordPress sites using Google AdSense …
(Google AdSense policy requirements)
Or promoting your products or services using Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you plan to sell information products with merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you are required to add certain legal pages to your website before they will approve your products for sale …
(Policy requirements for using ClickBank)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to add clear disclaimers and statements on your website, especially when using testimonials or product endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Be Compliant
New FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many websites are still 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 companies 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 any chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. you should protect your business interests by ensuring that your website complies with all FTC guidelines and regulations.
You can find many resources sites for businesses that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. We provide references to some of these at the end of this article …
(Word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Don’t Forget Social Media Applications
If you plan to develop social networking applications for your site users, you will also be required to provide sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others with access to various legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are unsure as to whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting anything online via affiliate marketing, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, or driving visitors to your site with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to provide on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
- If you have ever wondered if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
Common Legal Pages To Add To Your Website To Ensure Compliance
If your website is falling short in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.
Adding the following compliance pages to your website should help you keep out of trouble with many consumer protection authorities and third-party service providers, and avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us Page
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms Of Use
- Website Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to consider implementing one or more of the following pages:
- Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you sell or promote affiliate products or services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Links Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides advice about financial areas or money-making opportunities)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Video/Audio Terms Of Use (e.g. if you allow users to download media on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding the correct type of disclosure is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Discloses to users that you are not receiving compensation for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Discloses to users that you will benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and buy through your affiliate links.
- Sample/Review Copy – Lets readers be aware that you have received a sample or review copy of the product.
- Sponsored Post – Informs site users that you were compensated in some form to write the content.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets visitors know 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.
Adding Compliance Pages To Your Website
Ideally, you should have your lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this done, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Upload Legal Pages Manually
If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you in standard web page formatting (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload them 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 easily add links to these legal pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu admin area …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
Where To Display Legal Pages On Your Website
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and clearly visible to visitors. You can insert these into your WordPress sidebar (or place them in the footer of your website) to ensure that visitors will be able to access the information from all of your pages …
(Display links to legal information to visitors on all of your site’s pages)
We have created a detailed tutorial on adding links to pages on your sidebar and footer menu here:
Store-Bought Legal Templates
You can find attorney-drafted downloadable website forms and agreements by searching online, or visiting sites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
(FindLegalForms.com – Attorney-drafted legal forms)
For more details, go here:
Another option is to purchase a package of cut and paste legal templates written by 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 search and replace to insert your own details, then pasted into your legal 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
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page for every legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload these to your server as described earlier.
Go here for more info:
Legal Pages – Plugins
In addition to using templates, another option for adding legal pages to your site is to use WordPress plugins.
Here are some great WordPress plugins worth looking into:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)
If the idea of manually creating legal pages for your site feels too time-consuming for you, then consider installing a plugin like WP Legal Pages …
The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably affordable and well-supported plugin that will make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site much easier and save you a great deal of time.
Some of the benefits of using WordPress Legal Pages are:
- Built-in Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – 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 easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Editable Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit all legal pages like every other WP page.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any WP page.
- Forced Options – Force page lockdown. Page unlocks and can be accessed when users agree to your legal terms.
- Additional Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature will appear inside your main navigation area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)
This allows you to view, create and edit legal pages from your admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings)
With WPLegal Pages, you can easily create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, affiliate sites, e-commerce sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page type menu)
Select from several pre-written 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
Go here to learn more about this powerful plugin:
Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-driven websites and blogs that includes over 20 customizable legal templates for your site …
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(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 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 less than one minute and the plugin licensing is flexible, allowing you to install and use the plugin on all of your sites.
Visit this site to learn more:
If hiring legal experts to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional legal services.
We want your website to be protected!
Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (for FREE!), or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal forms, 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 Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you do business online (or plan to), it’s important that your site is compliant with all government regulations and the guidelines and terms of service provided by third-party products and services that you may be promoting or recommending online. Your internet presence must comply with various 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?
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we provide no legal advice on our website. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
Additional Information
Here is a useful list of sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your site to stay compliant and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:
- FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- Federal Trade Commission Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
- FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
- BBB – 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
- United States Copyright Office
And …
- 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
We hope you have found this article useful and that it 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 website using inexpensive resources and solutions.
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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)