Tag: Legal Pages

As a business owner, the last thing you want to do is to learn the hard way that you have broken the law.

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

New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you promote anything on your website for profit, 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 BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

The new laws has consequences for various business activities, including:

• Any kind of advertising, e.g. Google AdSense
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creation
• Bloggers
• etc.

If your website does not display certain pages (e.g. terms of service, 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 on their network, PayPal could close down your account, Facebook will reject your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to participate in a number of advertising and affiliate marketing networks.

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

This guide explains the importance of having a legally compliant website and provides inexpensive resources and solutions that will help make your WordPress website or blog legally compliant.

Is Your Website Or Blog Breaking Rules Or Regulations?

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice about your website or business. As stated previously, the aim of this article is only to make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws and regulations governing your business and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of 3rd-party companies whose products or services you offer on your website

The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Consider what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• A user has a heart attack after they use your online fitness program.
• The skin care creams you promote as an affiliate gives a number of users allergic reactions.
• You’ve informed subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t clearly informed them what you’ll do with it.
• Someone steals content from your website and publishes it on their website.
• There is no statement on your site telling your site visitors that you are recommending a product as an affiliate and could receive a sales commission if they purchase it via your affiliate link.
• You didn’t spell out the terms and conditions of your return policies.
• Visitors claim your testimonials are all fake and decide to sue you because of it.
• You haven’t disclosed in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your site publishes adult-related content and you didn’t take appropriate measures to keep underaged persons from accessing it.

Consider now these actual 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 received a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private details.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping Users IDs. Many marketers took a risk 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 websites picked at random, more than 90% were in breach of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had broken at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in violation of 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 entirely to the Google program with the infringement, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

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

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA Marketer
• MLM Networker
• Affiliate Promoter
• AdWords User
• Product Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
• Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online

It’s vitally important to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your website stays fully compliant with the law.

Compliance With Third-Party Services

Compliance with 3rd-party companies terms and policies is important.

You must let your site users know that your website complies will all laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and confidence in your website, it’s also required in many cases by most companies you will do business with.

Here are just some examples:

Google requires you to display legal information if using their products and service. This includes using features such as Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Making money online with your websites using Google AdSense advertising …

(Google AdSense advertising - policy requirements)

Or promoting your site through Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to sell information products using merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you are required to add legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …

(Policy requirements for using ClickBank)

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

(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Site 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 typically prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute site owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you do any kind of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. you should protect your business by making sure that your site complies with all FTC regulations.

Many sites provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to useful resources at the end of this article …

(Wording your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of the law)

Don’t Forget Social Media Apps

If you are planning to develop apps for your website, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others with information about various legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are not sure whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of service providers like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote anything online using affiliate marketing, or generating revenue online with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, 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 are required to provide on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
• If you’ve ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to act now and take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.

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

Basic Legal Pages To Add To Your Site

If your website is falling short in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your site should keep your business out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and 3rd-party providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues):

• About Us Page
• Contact Page
• Privacy Policy
• Terms Of Use
• Disclaimer Pages
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

Additionally, you may want to look into including any of these legal pages where applicable:

• Affiliate Agreement (if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides general information about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Video/Audio Terms Of Use (if you allow users to download videos or audio files on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

It’s important to add correct disclosure information to your site. For example:

• No Material Connection – Disclosure that informs your visitors that you will not receive any form of compensation for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Lets visitors know that you may receive compensation if they buy through an affiliate link.
• Sample/Review Copy – Discloses to visitors that you have received a sample or review copy of the product.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets visitors be aware that you have been compensated in some way to write the content.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs users that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to comply with the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring website publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Compliance Pages To Your Website

Ideally, you will consult lawyers or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once this has been done, 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 verbiage for you in standard web page formatting (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload them for you.

We recommend creating a legals directory on your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory via FTP …

(Upload legal pages to your server using FTP)

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

(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and clearly accessible to visitors. You can insert these into the WordPress sidebar (or the footer of your site) so that visitors can access the information from every page …

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

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

• Adding And Configuring WordPress Widgets In The Sidebar

Store-Bought Legal Templates

You can find attorney-drafted disclosures and downloadable forms and agreements by searching online, or going to sites like the ones listed below:

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com)

To learn more, go here:

• Find Legal Forms

Another option is to download a set of cut and paste website legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Legal Templates)

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

The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Pages include:

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance
• Privacy Policy: Google, DoubleClick DART, etc.
• Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.

You can either create a new page on your website for every 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 server as described previously.

Go here to learn more:

• Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

Legal Pages – Plugins

As well as using cut & paste legal templates, you can simplify things by using plugins.

Here are some plugins for WordPress websites worth looking into:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin)

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

This is not a free plugin, but it’s an 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 time.

Here are just some of the benefits of using WordPress Legal Pages:

• Built-in Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the legal pages you need in a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
• Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit legal pages like any page on your website.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when published.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other page on your site.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. When the user agrees to your terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
• Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will appear in your navigation section …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Screen)

The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites, affiliate/review websites, medical sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Create different legal pages)

You can also choose from various built-in 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

Visit this site to learn more this plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users with over twenty customizable compliance page templates for your site …

For more details go here:

• Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro)

Legal Suite Pro 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 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 have packaged high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers into a plugin that can be installed quickly on any WordPress site. Your legal pages can be installed and set up on your site in less than one minute and the plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use the plugin on all of your websites.

More info:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If hiring a lawyer to create your legal documentation is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic type of legal protection on your site until you can afford a solicitor.

We want your site to be legally protected!

Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (for FREE!), or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-written legal templates, or plugins - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

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

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As stated earlier, if you engage in any form of commercial activity online, you need to make sure that your website is compliant with all government legal requirements and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) required by 3rd-party products and services that you may be promoting or endorsing online. If your website isn’t compliant 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?

Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice here. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law concerning your specific business.

Resources

Here is a useful list of sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your site to remain compliant and meet its legal obligations:

• FTC 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
• 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

Additionally …

• 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 add legal pages to your website or blog.

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