One of the worst things that can happen to a business owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
As the cybersphere continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s absolutely essential that you stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains legal, 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 websites clearly state that if you promote anything on your website for profit, then 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 referred to as BBB. Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Better Business Bureau Website)
These laws has legal implications for various online business activities, including:
- Any kind of advertising, e.g. Google AdWords
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
If your site does not display certain legal pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t allow you to list digital products, PayPal could shut down your account, Facebook could disapprove your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote a number of advertising and online merchant networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.
In this article, we discuss why it’s important to have a legally compliant website and how to quickly add legal pages to your site.
Does Your Site Comply With The Law?
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice. As previously stated, the purpose of this article is only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal policies in accordance with the laws that govern online business practices and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of companies whose products or services you recommend
Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important
Is your business at risk? Consider what would happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- A person has a heart attack after using your online workout program.
- The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate marketer gives people skin rashes.
- You’ve told your subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t clearly spelled out what you plan to do with it.
- Someone steals content from your website and puts it up on their own website.
- There is no statement on your website making your visitors aware that you are an affiliate for the product you’re recommending that you may earn an affiliate commission if they purchase it.
- You don’t spell out the terms and conditions of your refund policies.
- A visitor claims the testimonials on your site are false 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 site includes adult information and you did not take appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged persons.
Consider also these real examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up their personal information to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, they’ve also been ordered 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 children’s private details.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independent study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% had breached 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 three 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 whose policies they had violated, 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?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA or PPA Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Product Marketer
- AdWords Advertiser
- Product Publisher
- Amazon Affiliate
- EBay Seller
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
- Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product
It’s imperative to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your digital presence complies with all laws governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Compliance With Third-Party Companies Terms And Policies
Complying with third-party services terms and policies is important.
You must let your visitors know that your website complies with legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only improves trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of most companies you do business with.
Here are just some examples:
Google requires websites to display legal information if using their services or product features. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Earning revenue with your website using Google AdSense advertising …
(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)
Or promoting your products or services using Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell digital products with merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will need to add various legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …
(Policy requirements for selling products through ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to add clear disclaimers and disclosures to visitors, especially regarding the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)
New FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Be Compliant
New 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 has happened in the past, this typically ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting site owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you do any type of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by making sure that your site complies with all FTC regulations.
There are many online business resources that can provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. We provide a number of references and links to resources at the end of this article …
(It’s important to structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Social Media Applications - Don’t Forget These
If you are planning to create apps that will integrate with your site, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with information about various legal pages …
(Apps for social networking sites also require compliance)
- If you are not sure 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 plan to promote products or services online via affiliate marketing, or make money online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay ads, or driving visitors to your site using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to include 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, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use)
What Compliance Information Should I Add To My Site To Be Insured Against Legal Compliance Issues?
If you suspect that your website or blog is lacking in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
Adding the following legal pages to your website will help keep your business out of trouble with most regulatory authorities and third-party service providers, and even help to avoid potential legal issues):
- About Us Page
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms Of Use
- Website Disclaimer
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the pages above, you may want to consider implementing any of the pages listed below:
- Affiliate Agreement (if you provide an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Links Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides general information about financial areas or income opportunities)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Use Of Media (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
Adding the right disclosure information to your website is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Lets your readers know that you will not receive compensation for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Notifies readers that you may receive compensation if they act on your recommendation and buy through one of your affiliate links.
- Review Or Sample Copy – Lets users know that you have received a review or sample copy of the product or service.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets your visitors know that you were compensated in some way to write the content.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs visitors that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to satisfy the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring online publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
Adding Legal Content To Your Website
Ideally, you should consult lawyers or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this completed, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Upload Legal Pages Manually To Your Website
If someone prepares the legal content for you in typical web page format (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend creating a legal directory on your server and uploading your legal pages to this directory via FTP …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your web server and upload pages using FTP)
You can then add a link to your pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu admin area …
(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)
Displaying Legal Web Pages On Your Website
Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and clearly accessible to your visitors. You can add these to your sidebar menu (or the footer of your website or blog) to ensure that visitors have access to legal information from every page …
(It’s important to display links to legal information to users on all of your website’s pages)
We have written a detailed tutorial on displaying links to pages on your sidebar and footer in WordPress here:
Templates
You can find downloadable attorney-drafted disclosures and forms and agreements just by searching online, or by going to sites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms – Legal forms)
More information:
Alternatively, you can purchase a set of legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages)
These legal pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with simple search and replace to add your own business details, then pasted into your pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Page Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance
- Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
- ToS & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new WordPress page for every legal form you want to add to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your web server as described earlier.
Go here for more details:
WordPress Legal Page Plugins
As well as using legal templates, you can keep things really simple by using WordPress plugins.
Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress users you should check out:
WordPress Legal Pages
(WP Legal Pages)
If manually creating legal pages for your site seems too time-consuming for you, then consider using WP Legal Pages instead …
This is not a free plugin, but it’s a very low-priced and well-supported plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you a great deal of time.
Some of the benefits of using the WP Legal Pages are:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit all legal pages like any other WordPress page.
- Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information will then 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 every other page on your site.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. Page unlocks when user agrees to your terms.
- Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with every new version.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will be added to your 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 Area)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, niche websites, medical sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Create different legal page types)
Choose from several built-in legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – 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 WordPress plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin containing over twenty customizable legal page templates for your website …
More info:
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 – 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 site. You can have legal pages 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 this plugin on all of your sites.
For more details, visit this site:
If using the services of lawyers to create your legal documentation is out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic form of legal protection on your site until you can afford to hire a solicitor.
We want your site to be legally protected!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal templates, or plugins as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates basic 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 do any type of business online, you need to make sure that your website stays compliant with all government laws and regulations and any guidelines and terms of service (TOS) provided by third-party services and products that you may decide to promote or use online. Your digital presence must comply with a whole set 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 do not provide legal advice. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
Legal Resources
Here is a time-saving list of websites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your business requires 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
- 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
- US Patent and Trademark Office
- US 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 why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your website.
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