Is your WordPress site compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any laws, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose products or services you do business with?
As the cybersphere continues growing at such a fast pace and rules keep changing, it’s vital that you try to stay on top of what’s happening and ensure that your website or blog remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if having a digital presence is an essential part of your overall business strategy.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for profit, you will need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau, also called the BBB. Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Better Business Bureau Website)
The new laws has legal implications for several business categories, including:
- Any kind of advertising, e.g. contextual advertising
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creators
- Blogging
- etc.
If your website does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t allow you to sell digital products, PayPal could suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could reject your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote a number of advertising or online marketing networks.
If your online business is not in compliance, you could also face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that your site(s) may be subject to legal requirements, the importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of other providers whose products or services you may be endorsing online, and that there are easy solutions that can help your websites become compliant, such as the plugins that we discuss further below.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice. You must carry out your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law pertaining to your business.
Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important
Is your business at risk? Consider what the implications to your business would be if these scenarios were to occur:
- A user has a cardiac arrest after they use your online workout program.
- The skin care lotion 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 haven’t described exactly what you’ll do with their details.
- Someone copies your content and publishes it on their site.
- You did not tell your visitors that you are promoting a product as an affiliate and may receive an affiliate commission if visitors purchase it.
- You haven’t spelled out the terms and conditions of your refund policies.
- A visitor claims your testimonials are all fake and tries to sue you.
- You haven’t disclosed that you have received a free copy of a product you are reviewing.
- Your site contains adult-related content and you didn’t take sufficient measures to keep underaged children from accessing it.
Consider also the real case studies of costly compliance breaches described:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up their personal information (including credit card info to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer received 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 information.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping UIDs. 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 randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% had infringed at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had broken at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in breach 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 with warnings or lose access entirely to the Google program 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 a target of litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA, CPC or PPA Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Product Marketer
- AdWords User
- Product Marketer
- Amazon Affiliate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
- Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online
You need to make sure that your digital presence complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Complying With Third-Party Services Terms And Policies
Compliance with third-party services terms and policies is important.
You are obligated to let your visitors know that your business complies will all legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and confidence in your site, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you will do business with.
For example:
Google requires your site to display legal information when using their products and service. This includes Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Making money online with your site with Google AdSense …
(Google AdSense display advertising - policy requirements)
And even promoting your services or products using Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you plan to sell information-based products using companies like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you are required to add legal pages before your products are approved for sale in their marketplace …
(ClickBank – policy requirements for product sellers)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to include clear disclaimers and statements on your website, especially regarding the use of testimonials or product endorsements …
(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensuring 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 business are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As is already the case, this often results in 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 chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. you should protect your business by ensuring that your site complies with FTC guidelines and regulations.
You can find many resources online that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references to some of these at the end of this article …
(Word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Don’t Forget Social Media Apps
If you are planning to create applications that will integrate with your website, social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others will require you to provide information about your legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are unsure whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting anything on your site using affiliate marketing, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay ads, or driving visitors to your website with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to include on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts terminated.
- If you’ve ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies)
Common Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Website To Ensure Compliance
If you suspect that your website or blog is lacking in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
Adding the following compliance pages to your site will help your website keep out of trouble with many regulatory agencies and third-party providers, and avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Page
- Privacy Statement
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above pages, you may want to look into adding one or more of the following pages where applicable:
- Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Links Policy
- Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides information about health or medical areas)
- 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 the right type of disclosure to your site is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Disclosure that informs readers that you’re not receiving any form of compensation for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Lets readers be aware that you will benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and purchase through affiliate links on your site.
- Review/Sample Copy – Lets your readers know that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product or service you’re reviewing by the author or product developer.
- Sponsored Post – Informs site users that you have been compensated in some way to write the article.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets 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.
How To Add Legal Content To Your Website
Ideally, you should have a lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this prepared, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Upload Legal Web Pages Manually To Your Website
If someone prepares the legal content for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your 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 using FTP …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your server and upload pages via FTP)
You can then easily add links to these pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …
(WordPress Menu)
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and clearly accessible to all site visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into your sidebar menu (or the footer of your website or blog) to ensure that users have access to legal information from all pages …
(It’s important to display links to legal pages on all of your website’s pages)
For a detailed tutorial about displaying links to pages on your WordPress sidebar using widgets, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
Use Ready-Made Legal Templates
You can find attorney-drafted downloadable website forms and agreements by searching online, or by visiting websites like the ones shown below:
Find Legal Forms
More info:
Another option is to download a set of cut & paste website legal templates drafted 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 a simple quick search and replace to add your own business details, then pasted into your pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Form Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance
- Privacy Policy: Google & DoubleClick DART, etc.
- ToS & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new WordPress 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 these to your web server as previously described.
For more information, go here:
Legal Pages – WordPress Plugins
As well as using templates, you can simplify things using plugins.
Here are some great plugins for WordPress websites worth looking into:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin
(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to bother with creating legal web pages manually, then consider using a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages instead …
The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s a low-priced and well-supported plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you time.
Some of the benefits of using the WP Legal Pages are:
- Pre-written 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.
- Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – Content editor lets you edit legal pages just like any other page on your website.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your content when published.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like every other page on your site.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. When users agree to the terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
- New Features – More features are being added to this plugin with every new version.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature will appear in your WordPress dashboard section …
(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 Area)
You have the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, affiliate/review sites, medical sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Create different legal pages)
Select from various built-in legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – 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:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
complete website compliance & disclaimer solution …
For more details go here:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(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 & Conditions
- 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 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. 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 this plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
To learn more, visit this site:
If hiring a lawyer to create your legal pages is out of your budget, consider implementing at least some type 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 software below (it’s FREE!), or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-drafted legal documents, or plugins - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator lets you quickly generate essential legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you make money online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your site is found to comply with all regulations and any terms of service and guidelines of 3rd-party products and services that you may decide to promote or offer online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect 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?
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice here. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.
References And Resources
Here is a useful list of additional sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your business requires to comply and meet its legal obligations:
- Federal Trade Commission 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 – Better Business Bureau
- 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
Additionally …
- 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
Hopefully, this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your website using simple methods and solutions.
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