Is your website legally compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking any laws, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose products or services you are doing business with?
As the digital economy continues growing at such a fast pace and rules constantly change, it’s absolutely vital to try and stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains compliant, especially if having a digital presence is important in the success of your overall business strategy.
New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for profit, you must follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the Better Business Bureau (BBB). 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)
The introduction of these laws has consequences for several business activities, including:
- Any kind of advertising, e.g. text link ads, Google Adsense, etc.
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creators
- Bloggers
- etc.
If your site does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products on their network, PayPal could suspend your account, Facebook will disapprove your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote various advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.
In this article, we discuss the importance of having a legally compliant website and how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website or blog.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice on this website. As previously stated, the aim of this article is to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal policies in accordance with the laws governing business practices online and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose services or products you recommend on your website or blog
Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important
Are you at risk? Consider for a minute what would happen to your business if any of these scenarios were to occur:
- A customer suffers a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness workout.
- The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate marketer gives a number of users an allergic reaction.
- You’ve told subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t described exactly what you plan to do with their details.
- Someone steals your content and puts it up on their own site.
- There is no statement on your site making visitors aware that you are an affiliate for the product you are selling and may derive an affiliate commission if visitors decide to purchase through your affiliate link.
- You haven’t spelled out the conditions of your refund or return policies.
- Online visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are all fake and try to sue you.
- You didn’t disclose that you were given a free copy of the product you are reviewing.
- Your site publishes adult information and you did not take sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged persons.
Consider also these documented case studies of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up personal information to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, he is now required to give everyone they do business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
- A social networking app developer copped a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private details about children.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes Users IDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, more than 90% had infringed 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% 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 notices or lose access entirely to the Google program whose policies they had infringed, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how easy it is to risk being exposed to litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA (Cost Per Action) Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Promoter
- AdWords User
- Niche Publisher
- Amazon Associate
- EBay Seller
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
- Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online
It’s vitally important to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your online business is legally compliant.
Compliance With Third-Party Companies - ToS, Policies, etc.
Compliance with 3rd-party services terms and policies is important.
You must let your visitors know that your business complies will all legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only increases trust and confidence in your site, it’s also required in many cases by most companies you will interact with.
For example:
Google requires your site to display certain information when using many of their products and features. This includes Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Monetizing your online properties with Google AdSense advertising …
(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)
Or promoting your business through Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you sell information products via companies like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will need to add certain legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …
(ClickBank – policy requirements for product sellers)
The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to add clear disclaimers and policies on your website, especially if you plan to sell products online using testimonials or product endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Website Is Compliant
New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many sites are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this often ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting site owners in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you plan to do any kind of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business interests by making sure that your website complies with FTC guidelines.
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 additional references to a number of these at the end of this article …
(Structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Social Media Apps Also Require Compliance
If you plan to develop social networking applications for your site, sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others require you to provide access to various legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are unsure as to whether or not you may be 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 are considering promoting services or products on your site using affiliate marketing, or making money online with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, or driving visitors to your website with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to include on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts suspended.
- If you’ve ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business interests.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use)
What Compliance Information Does My Website Need To Be Legally Compliant?
If you suspect that your website or blog lacks in aspects of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
Adding the following legal pages to your website will help your site keep out of trouble with many consumer protection agencies and external providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the above pages, you may want to look into implementing one or more of these pages if applicable:
- Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides financial content)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Audio/Video Terms (e.g. if you provide users with access to videos or audio files on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding correct web content disclosure information is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs your visitors that you’re not being paid for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Lets site users be aware that you will be compensated if they act on your recommendation and purchase through your affiliate links.
- Review/Sample Copy – Disclosure that informs readers that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product you’re writing about.
- Sponsored Post – Lets users know that you have been 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 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 Compliance Pages To Your WordPress Site
Ideally, you should have a lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once these have been created, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Upload Legal Web Pages Manually
If someone prepares and delivers the legal content for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend creating a legals folder on your server and uploading your legal pages to this directory via FTP …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your server and upload pages using FTP)
You can then add a link to your pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu feature …
(WordPress Menu)
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and clearly visible to all site visitors. You can add these to the sidebar menu (or the footer of your website or blog) so that visitors can access legal information from all of your pages …
(It’s important to display links to your legal pages to users on all of your site’s pages)
We have written a detailed tutorial about displaying links to pages on your sidebar using widgets here:
Templates
You can easily find attorney-prepared downloadable forms and agreements just by searching online, or by visiting sites like the ones shown below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms – Legal forms)
Go here to learn more:
Alternatively, you can purchase a package of cut & paste website legal templates drafted by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut And 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 insert your own details, then pasted into your pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Form 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 guidelines that came into effect in 2012)
- Privacy Policy: Google, DoubleClick DART, etc.
- ToS & Conditions of Use: with 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 pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your web server as described earlier.
For more details, go here:
Plugins – Legal Pages
As well as using templates, another option is to use a plugin.
Here are some legal plugins for WordPress-driven sites you should check out:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)
If setting up legal pages manually feels too time-consuming for you, then consider choosing WordPress Legal Pages instead …
This plugin is not free, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will make the task of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site much easier and save you many headaches.
Some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages plugin are:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the legal pages you will need in a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- Fully Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages just like every other WordPress page.
- Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like every other page on your website.
- Forced Options – Force page lockdown. Page unlocks when the user agrees to your legal terms.
- Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will appear in your main WP dashboard area …
(WP Legal Pages – Menu)
This allows you to create, edit and view legal pages from the admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings)
You can easily create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, niche websites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page Type)
Choose from various built-in legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – 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 to learn more about the benefits of using this handy plugin:
Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-driven websites with over twenty customizable legal pages for your site …
More info:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro 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 – 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 one minute or less and the license allows you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
More information:
If hiring a lawyer to create your online legal documentation is currently out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic form of legal protection on your site until you can afford a lawyer.
We want your website to be legally protected!
Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (for FREE!), or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-prepared legal documentation, or a WordPress plugin - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator quickly generates essential legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, 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 plan to), you need to ensure that your site stays compliant with all laws and regulations and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) required by 3rd-party sites that you may be promoting or using 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?
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements pertaining to your business.
Legal Resources And References
Here is a time-saving list of additional sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your site to stay compliant and meet legal requirements and guidelines:
- 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 – 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
Also …
- 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
- 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 the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly add essential legal pages to your website or blog using simple methods and resources.
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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)