Tag: Legal Pages

One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break the law.

As the digital way of life continues growing at an overwhelming speed and rules keep changing, it’s absolutely essential that you stay on top of what’s happening and ensure that your website remains compliant, especially if having a digital presence is important in the success of your business strategy.

New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for commercial gain, then you must follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the (US based) BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – Better Business Bureau)

The introduction of these new laws affect various business categories, including:

• Any type of advertising, including display advertising
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creation
• Bloggers
• etc.

If you do not display certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not approve digital products on their network, PayPal could suspend your account, Facebook could suspend web applications, and you won’t be accepted into a range of advertising and online merchant networks.

Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.

The purpose of this post is to make you aware that your website or blog may be required to comply with legal requirements, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be recommending on your website, and that there are solutions for WordPress users that can help your site become fully compliant, such as the plugins that we discuss further below.

Is Your Site Legally Compliant?

Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based in.

Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important

Consider for one moment what the implications to your business would be if the scenarios below were to occur:

• A person has a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online fitness program.
• The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate gives people an adverse reaction.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you have not informed them exactly what you’ll do with their personal details.
• Someone steals your content and publishes it on their own site.
• There is no statement on your website or blog letting visitors know that you are an affiliate for the product you are recommending that you may receive an affiliate commission if they buy using your link.
• You haven’t spelled out the terms and conditions of your refund or return policies.
• Someone claims that the testimonials on your site are misleading and decides to sue you as a result.
• You haven’t disclosed in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your website contains adult-related content and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to keep underaged persons from accessing it.

Consider too these real 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 (including credit card details to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, he was also ordered to give a copy of the judgement to everyone they do business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
• A social networking app developer was slapped with a whopping $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 internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
• An independently-conducted 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in breach of at least 2 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 notices or lose access entirely to the Google program whose policies with the violation, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how easy it is to risk becoming targeted for non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Product Marketer
• AdWords Advertiser
• Niche Marketer
• Amazon Associate
• EBay Seller
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
• Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product

it’s important to make sure that your website remains fully compliant with the law.

Complying With 3rd-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.

Compliance with third-party services terms and policies is important.

You are expected to let your 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 do business with.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires websites to display legal information if using their products. This includes Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Monetizing your blogs with Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense display advertising policy requirements)

Or promoting your products or services using Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to sell digital products via places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you are required to add a number of legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …

(Policy requirements for selling via ClickBank)

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you include clear disclaimers and policy statements to visitors, especially if you plan to sell or promote products online using testimonials or product endorsements …

(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Website Is Compliant

FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many websites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has already been the case, this often prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute website owners in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you do any type of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business interests by ensuring that your website complies with FTC guidelines and regulations.

A number of sites provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. See our additional references and 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 laws and regulations)

Don’t Forget Social Media Applications

If you are planning to develop applications for your site users, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with information about your 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 websites like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting services or products on your site using affiliate marketing, or generate revenue with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or using 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 all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts shut down.
• If you have ever wondered if “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, most third-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)

Common Legal Pages To Add To Your Site To Ensure Compliance

If your web site is lacking in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your site will help your site stay out of trouble with many regulatory agencies and external service providers, and avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):

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

In addition to the above pages, you may want to consider adding any of these compliance pages:

• Affiliate Disclosure (if you provide information about affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides general advice about financial areas or income opportunities)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Media Terms Of Use (e.g. if you provide users with access to videos or audio files on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

Adding the right disclosure information to your site is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Informs readers that you will not receive for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Lets visitors know that you will derive some form of financial or similar type of benefit if they act on your recommendation and buy through an affiliate link.
• Sample/Review Copy – Lets readers know that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product or service.
• Sponsored Post – Discloses to users that you were compensated in some way to write the post.
• Third Party Advertising – Lets readers 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.

How To Add Compliance Pages To Your Site

Ideally, you should consult your lawyer or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once this has been done, there are several ways to include them in your website.

Uploading Legal Web Pages Manually

If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload these pages for you.

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

(Upload legal pages to your server via FTP)

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

(Custom WordPress Menu)

Where To Display Legal Web Pages On Your Site

Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and clearly visible to visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into the sidebar (or the footer section of your site) so that users have access to the information from all of your pages …

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

We have written a detailed tutorial about displaying links to pages on your WordPress sidebar using widgets here:

• Configuring Widgets On The Sidebar Navigation Menu

Legal Templates

You can easily find attorney-drafted downloadable internet forms and agreements just by searching online, or going to websites like the ones listed below:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

For more details, go here:

• FindLegalForms.com

Alternatively, you can download a package of cut & paste website legal templates drafted by attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Website Legal Pages)

These legal pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with simple search and replace to add your own business details, then pasted into your legal web pages.

The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Page Templates 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 regulations brought into effect in March 2012)
• Privacy Policy: Google, DART, etc.
• ToS & Conditions of Use.

You can either create a new page for each legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your server as described earlier.

More info:

• Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Form Templates

WordPress Legal Page Plugins

As well as using templates, you can keep things very simple by using WordPress plugins.

Here are some legal plugins for WordPress-powered sites worth looking into:

WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WP Legal Pages)

If the idea of creating legal pages manually feels too time-consuming for you, then consider installing a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages instead …

WordPress Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you a great deal of time and effort.

Some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages are:

• Built-in Legal Templates – The plugin gives you access to 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 around 3 minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
• Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages just like every other page on your website.
• Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your content when published.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any other page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page lockdown. Page unlocks and can be accessed only when users agree to your terms.
• New Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item is added to your main dashboard menu …

(WP Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)

This lets you create, view and edit your legal pages from the admin area …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Screen)

You can easily create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, review sites, e-commerce sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Page type menu)

Select from a number of built-in legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages – 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 this plugin, go here:

• WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Compliance Bar is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your web presence …

Go here to learn more:

• Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

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 & Conditions
• 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 secured rights to high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers and packaged them into a plugin that can be installed quickly on any WordPress powered site. Your legal pages can be installed and set up on your site in one minute or less and the plugin licensing is flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites.

Go here for more info:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If hiring a lawyer to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some type of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional assistance.

We want your business to be legally protected!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-drafted legal templates, or a WordPress plugin - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

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

***

As stated earlier, if you are making money online (or are planning to), you need to ensure that your website remains compliant with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service of third-party products and services that you may decide to promote or recommend online. Your internet presence must comply with a number of regulations, some of which you may not be aware of.

Non-compliance 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 cannot offer legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.

Legal Resources & References

Here is a time-saving list of additional sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your business requires to comply and meet 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
• US Patent and Trademark Office
• United States Copyright Office

In Addition …

• 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 you have found this article useful and that it has helped you understand the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information above to quickly add essential legal pages to your site.

***