Tag: Legal Pages

As a business owner, the last thing you want to do is to learn the hard way that you have done something illegal.

Online laws are designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to anyone who sells, markets or promotes products or services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements won’t protect you from being slapped with a legal notice.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for profit, you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Search online for information about “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

These laws has consequences for several business activities, including:

• Any type of advertising, like contextual advertising
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creators
• Blogging
• etc.

If you do not include certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t allow you to list digital products, PayPal could suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will reject your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to enrol in a range of advertising or online marketing networks.

You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.

This guide explains why it’s important to have a compliant website and describes simple resources and solutions that will make your site compliant quickly and easily.

Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice in this article. Do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law in your country or region.

Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important

Is your business at risk? Consider for a minute what could happen to your business if any of the situations below were to happen:

• A person has a cardiac arrest after they use your online workout program.
• The skin care products you promote as an affiliate gives people an allergic reaction.
• Your opt-in list displays a statement informing prospective subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not clearly spelled out what you plan to do with their details.
• Someone copies your content and publishes it on their own website.
• There is no statement on your site making your site visitors aware that you are an affiliate for the product you are promoting that you may get paid an affiliate commission if visitors buy it.
• You didn’t spell out the terms of your refund policies.
• Someone claims that your testimonials are all fake and decides to sue you.
• You haven’t disclosed in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your site publishes adult-related information and you have not taken appropriate measures to keep underaged persons from accessing it.

Consider also these actual case studies of costly compliance breaches:

• 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 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 gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
• An independently-conducted study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-picked websites, more than 90% were in breach of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had breached at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had infringed 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 with warnings or lose access entirely to the Google program they had violated, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how you could be exposed to the risk of litigation?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA (Cost Per Action) or CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Product Promoter
• AdWords User
• Niche Marketer
• Amazon Associate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• 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 online business complies with all laws governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.

Complying With Third-Party Companies

Complying with 3rd-party services terms and policies is important.

You are obligated to let your site users know that your website complies with laws and recommended guidelines. This not only improves trust and buyer confidence in your website, it’s also a requirement of most companies you will do business with online.

Here are just some examples:

Google requires your site to display certain information when using many of their services. This includes using Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Earning revenue with your sites using Google AdSense advertising …

(Google AdSense ads - policy requirements)

And even promoting your business via Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you plan to sell digital products through places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will need to add certain legal pages before your products can be approved for sale …

(Policy requirements for using ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to display clear disclaimers and disclosures on your website, especially concerning the use of testimonials or product endorsements …

(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Site Is Compliant

FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many business are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As documented on their website, this often ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you plan to do any type of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by ensuring that your website complies with FTC guidelines and regulations.

There are many resources websites for businesses that can provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to useful resources to some of these at the end of this article …

(You must structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Don’t Forget Social Media Applications

If you plan to develop apps for your website, sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others require you to provide access to various legal pages …

(Facebook apps also require compliance)

• If you are not sure whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote services or products online using affiliate marketing, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay advertising, or driving visitors to your site with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to provide on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts terminated.
• If you have ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their policies)

Essential Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Site

If you suspect that your website or blog is falling short in aspects of compliance, then this section will help you.

Adding the following compliance pages to your site will help keep your business out of trouble with many regulatory agencies and external service providers, and avoid potential legal issues):

• About Us Page
• Contact Page
• Privacy Statement
• Terms And Conditions
• Disclaimers
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

In addition to the pages above, you may want to look into adding any of the pages listed below where applicable:

• Affiliate Disclosure (if you provide information about affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides health or medical content)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Video/Audio Terms Of Use (if you provide users with access to videos or audio files on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

It’s important to add the right disclosures to your site. For example:

• No Material Connection – This lets users be aware that you will not receive any kind of payment for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Lets readers be aware that you will derive some form of financial benefit if they buy through an affiliate link.
• Review Or Sample Copy – Lets users be aware that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product by the author or product developer.
• Sponsored Post – Discloses to your visitors that you have been compensated in some form to write the article.
• Third Party Advertising – Lets your 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 Content To Your WordPress Site

Ideally, you will consult lawyers and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this completed, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Upload Legal Web Pages Manually To Your Website

If someone prepares and delivers the legal content for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload them for you.

We recommend creating a legals folder in your server and uploading your legal pages to this directory (e.g. using FTP) …

(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your server and upload pages via FTP)

You can then add links to these pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …

(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)

Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and clearly visible to visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into the WordPress sidebar (or the footer section of your website or blog) so that users will be able to access legal information from all of your pages …

(Display links to your legal information on all of your website’s pages)

We have created a detailed tutorial on adding links to pages on your sidebar menu and footer in WordPress here:

• Adding And Configuring WordPress Widgets In Your Site

Store-Bought Legal Templates

You can find downloadable attorney-drafted forms and agreements just by searching online, or visiting sites like the ones shown below:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

For more details, go here:

• FindLegalForms.com

Alternatively, you can purchase a package of cut & paste legal templates created by attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)

Cut & Paste website legal pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with a simple quick search and replace to add your own business details, then pasted into your legal web pages.

The legal forms 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
• 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 every legal form you want added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload the pages to your web server as described earlier.

Go here to learn more:

• Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

Legal Pages – WordPress Plugins

As well as using cut & paste templates, you can keep things very simple by using plugins.

Here are some plugins for WordPress websites worth looking into:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)

If you don’t want to spend time creating legal pages manually, then consider choosing a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages instead …

WordPress Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a low-priced and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you loads of headaches.

Here are just some of the benefits of using WP Legal Pages plugin:

• Built-in Templates – Includes 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 a few clicks of the mouse.
• Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages just like every other page on your website.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – Add shortcodes to any of your WordPress 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 any other page on your site.
• Forced Options – Force page lock down. When users agree to the legal terms, the page unlocks.
• Additional Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will be added to your navigation menu …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Menu)

This allows you to create, edit and view legal pages from your admin area …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Screen)

You have the option of creating legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites with products, review sites, Amazon sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Create different legal page types)

You can also select from various built-in legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Pre-configured 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

Go here for more information about the benefits of using this useful plugin:

• WP Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-driven websites with over twenty customizable compliance page templates for your digital presence …

Learn We have written a detailed review of this plugin here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

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 Use
• 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 websites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).

More info:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If using the services of legal experts to create your 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 to hire the services of a solicitor.

We want your business to be protected!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal content, or a WordPress legal pages plugin as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator Software lets you easily generate basic legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you engage in any form of business online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your site complies with all government regulations and any guidelines and terms of service required by 3rd-party products and services that you may decide to promote or use online. Your website 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, please note that we are not lawyers and we provide no legal advice. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements concerning your specific business.

Legal Resources

Here is a useful list of additional sites we recommend you visit to better understand what may be required of your site to comply and meet legal requirements and guidelines:

• Federal Trade Commission 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

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
• Google 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 above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your WordPress website or blog using simple and cost-effective resources and WordPress plugins.

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