Is your WordPress site compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking any laws, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose services or products you are promoting or selling?
Internet laws, regulations, and guidelines are designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to any person who sells, markets or promotes products or services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements won’t excuse someone from taking legal action against you.
New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for profit, you need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the (US based) Better Business Bureau (BBB). Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – Better Business Bureau)
These laws has ramifications for various business categories, including:
- Any type of advertising, e.g. Google AdWords or AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
Without certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank or JVZoo will not let you list digital products for sale, PayPal could close down your account, Facebook could suspend web applications, and you will not be allowed to promote a number of advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
You could 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 website.
Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice about your website or business. You must carry out your own due diligence and we recommend consulting a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law wherever you do business.
Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important
Are you at risk? Consider for one moment what the implications to your business would be if the following were to occur:
- A customer suffers a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness workout.
- The skin care lotion you sell as an affiliate marketer gives someone who purchases from your link an adverse reaction.
- You’ve told subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not spelled out exactly what you’ll do with the details you’ve collected.
- Someone steals content from your site and publishes it on their site.
- There is no statement on your site letting your visitors know that you are an affiliate for the product you are selling that you may get paid an affiliate commission if visitors buy via your affiliate link.
- You didn’t spell out the conditions of your return policies.
- A visitor claims your testimonials are fake and tries 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 content and you have not taken appropriate measures to restrict access by underage children.
Consider also these documented examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up personal information to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, he is now required to provide a copy of the judgement to everyone he does business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
- A social networking app developer copped a massive $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 prohibits using software that scrapes Users IDs. Many internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted 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% had infringed 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 infringed, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how you could be exposed to the risk of litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA (Cost Per Action) or CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Marketer
- AdSense Publisher
- Niche Marketer
- Amazon Affiliate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
- Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online
You need to make sure that your website is legally compliant.
Compliance With Third-Party Services
Compliance with third-party services terms and policies is important.
You must let your site users know that your business complies with laws and recommended guidelines. This not only improves trust and confidence in your business, it’s also required by most companies you do business with online.
Here are just some examples:
Google requires you to display certain information if using their products and service. This includes using features like Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Monetizing your websites using Google AdSense advertising …
(Google AdSense ads - policy requirements)
Or promoting your services or products via Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell products online through places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will need to add a number of legal pages to your site before your products can be approved for sale in their network …
(Policy requirements for using ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to include clear disclaimers and statements on your website, especially when concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Comply
FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many sites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has already been the case, this often ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting companies for breaches of regulation 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. we strongly recommend protecting your business by making sure that your website complies with all FTC regulations and guidelines.
You can find many online business resources that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. See the resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(Word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Social Media Apps Also Require Compliance
If you plan to create applications for your site, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others require you to provide information about your legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are unsure as to whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of companies like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote products or services online as an affiliate marketer, or make money online with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon ads, 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, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
Essential Legal Pages To Add To Your Website
If you suspect that your web site is lacking in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your website will help keep your business out of trouble with most regulatory agencies and external providers, and avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Page
- Privacy Policy
- Terms Of Use
- Website Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the pages above, you may want to consider including one or more of these pages if applicable:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you provide information about affiliate products or services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Links Policy
- Health Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides general health or medical content)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Audio/Video Terms (if you allow media downloads on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
It’s important to add correct disclosure information to your website. For example:
- No Material Connection – This lets readers be aware that you will not receive any type of compensation for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Discloses to users that you may derive some form of financial benefit if they act on your recommendation and buy through one of your affiliate links.
- Sample Or review Copy – Explains to site users that you have received a sample or review copy of the product or service by the author or developer.
- Sponsored Post – Lets readers know that you have been compensated in some way to write the post.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets users 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 website publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
Adding Compliance Pages To Your WordPress Website
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 Pages Manually To Your Website
If someone prepares and delivers 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 legal directory on your web server and uploading your legal pages to this folder (e.g. via FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your web server and upload pages using FTP)
You can then add a link to these legal pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu administration …
(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)
Where To Display Legal Pages On Your Website
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and display clearly to visitors. You can add these to the sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your website or blog) so that visitors can access the information from every web page …
(It’s important to display links to your legal pages on all of your website’s pages)
To learn more about displaying links to pages on your sidebar menu or footer in WordPress using widgets, refer to this tutorial:
Legal Templates
You can easily find downloadable attorney-drafted website forms and agreements by searching online, or 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 written by attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Form Templates)
Cut & Paste website templates were written by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with a simple quick search and replace to add your own business details, then pasted into your legal pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service (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 pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your server as previously described.
Go here to learn more:
Legal Page Plugins
As well as using cut & paste templates, another option for adding legal pages to your website is to use WordPress plugins.
Here are some great plugins for WordPress users that you may be interested in checking out:
WP Legal Pages
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)
If you don’t want to bother with creating legal pages manually, then consider using a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages instead …
The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s an affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site much easier and save you a great deal of time.
Here are just some of the benefits of using WP Legal Pages plugin:
- Built-in Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of 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 easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Editable Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages just like every other page on your site.
- Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your content when published.
- Exclude pages. 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. When a user agrees to your legal terms, the page unlocks.
- New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature is added to your main WP dashboard section …
(WP Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)
This allows you to create, view and edit legal pages from the admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Area)
With WP Legal Pages, you can easily create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review websites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Create different legal page types)
Select from a number of pre-written legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages – Pre-configured 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 the plugin site to learn more about using this powerful plugin:
Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users that contains over 20 customizable legal templates for your digital presence …
More info:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro)
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. You can have legal pages 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.
More information:
If using the services of a lawyer to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, then consider at least implementing some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford to hire the services of a legal form or lawyer.
We want your business to be protected!
Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (it’s FREE!), or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal documentation, or a WordPress plugin as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator allows you to easily generate necessary legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
***
As we’ve previously pointed out, if you do business online (or plan to), it’s important that your site complies with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines for 3rd-party sites that you may be promoting or advertising online. Your website or blog must comply with numerous laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you may not even be aware of.
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 offer legal advice. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with the law pertaining to your business.
Resources
Below is a time-saving list of sites we suggest you visit to better understand what your website may require to stay compliant and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:
- 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 – 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
- United States Patent and Trademark Office
- United States Copyright Office
See Also …
- 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 this article has helped you understand the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your site using inexpensive solutions.
***
"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)