As a business owner, the last thing you want to do is to learn the hard way that you have broken the law.
As digital business continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules constantly change, it’s vital that you try to stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your web presence plays a significant role in your business strategy.
New laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you promote anything on your site for profit, then you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection 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 for more details.
(BBB – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
These laws affect several business categories, including:
- Any form of advertising, e.g. Google AdWords
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
If your site does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to list digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could reject web applications, and you won’t be allowed to enroll in a number of advertising and online merchant networks.
If you are not in compliance, you could end up facing a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that your website(s) may be required to comply with legal requirements, the importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of other providers whose services or products you may be advertising on your website, and that there are easy solutions that can help your online properties become more compliant, such as the plugins listed further below.
Is Your Website Compliant?
Legal 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 consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.
Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important
Are you at risk? Consider what could happen to your business if these scenarios were to take place:
- A customer has a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness workout.
- The skin cream you sell as an affiliate marketer gives someone an allergic reaction.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t described exactly what you plan to do with it.
- Someone steals content from your website and puts it up on their own site.
- There is no statement on your website making your site visitors aware that you are marketing a product as an affiliate and could receive financial benefits if they purchase it.
- You did not spell out the terms and conditions of your refund/return policies.
- Online visitors claim the testimonials on your site are misleading and try to sue you as a result.
- You did not disclose that you received a free copy in your product review.
- Your website publishes adult-related content and you have not taken appropriate measures to keep underage children from accessing it.
Consider now 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 a debt reduction offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer was slapped with a massive $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 using software that scrapes UIDs. Many internet marketers took a risk 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% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in breach 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 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 a target of litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Product Promoter
- AdWords Advertiser
- Product Marketer
- Amazon Associate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
- Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product
It’s vitally important to make sure that your website complies with all laws governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Complying With Third-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.
Leading online companies and government agencies that regulate trade emphasize the need and importance of complying with the terms and policies of third-party service providers.
You must let your site users know that your website complies will all legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases trust and confidence in your website, it’s also required by most companies you will do business with online.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Google requires websites to display legal information if using many of their products. This includes Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Earning revenue with your sites with Google AdSense advertising …
(Google AdSense policy requirements)
And even promoting your services or products via Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell information-based products via companies like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you are required to add certain legal pages before they will approve your products for selling via their networks …
(Policy requirements for selling digital products through ClickBank)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you include clear disclaimers and policy statements to visitors, especially regarding the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Site Is Compliant
New FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many websites are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been the case, this typically prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies 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 does not operate in the U.S. you should protect your business by ensuring that your site complies with all FTC guidelines.
You can find many sites that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. We provide references to some of these at the end of this article …
(Structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Don’t Forget Social Media Apps
If you plan to develop applications for your site, social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others require you to provide information about various legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- 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 are considering promoting services or products on your site using affiliate marketing, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon ads, or driving visitors to your website using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to include on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts suspended.
- If you’ve ever wondered if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)
What Legal Pages Should I Add To My Website To Be Insured Against Legal Compliance Issues?
If your web site 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 website should help your site keep out of trouble with many consumer protection authorities and 3rd-party service providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms & Conditions
- Website Disclaimer
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the pages above, you may want to look into implementing any of these pages if applicable:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you provide information about affiliate products and services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Linking Policy
- Health Disclaimers (if your website provides information about health or medical areas)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Media Terms Of Use (e.g. if you allow users to download media on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding the correct type of content disclosure is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – This lets visitors know that you will not receive compensation for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Notifies readers that you will derive some form of financial benefit if they act on your recommendation and buy through your affiliate links.
- Review Or Sample Copy – Lets users know that you have received a review or sample copy of the product or service by the author or product developer.
- Sponsored Post – Discloses to your visitors that you have been compensated in some way to write the article.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets users know that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to satisfy the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring website publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Content To Your WordPress Website
Ideally, you should have a lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this done, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Upload Legal Pages To Your Site
If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend adding a legals folder to your web server and uploading your legal pages to this directory (e.g. using FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your server and upload pages via FTP)
You can then easily add a link to these pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …
(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)
Where To Display Legal Pages On Your Site
Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and clearly accessible to visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to the sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your site) so that users can access the information from all your pages …
(Display links to legal information on all of your website’s pages)
For a detailed tutorial on adding links to pages on your WP sidebar using widgets, see this tutorial:
Templates
You can find downloadable attorney-prepared forms and agreements by searching online, or by visiting sites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms)
For more details, go here:
Another option is to download a set of legal templates written by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)
Cut & Paste website templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a quick search and replace to insert your own business name and URL, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Forms include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page on your website for each legal form you want to add to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload these to your web server as previously described.
More info:
WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages
As well as using templates, another option is to use a plugin.
Here are some WordPress plugins that you should check out:
WP Legal Pages Plugin
(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to bother with creating legal web pages manually, then consider choosing WP Legal Pages …
This plugin is not free, but it’s an affordable and well-supported plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you many headaches.
Some of the benefits of using the WordPress Legal Pages are:
- Pre-written Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the basic legal pages you need in a few minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
- Fully 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 WordPress page.
- Custom Shortcodes – 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 every other WordPress page.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. When the user agrees to the legal terms, the page unlocks.
- Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with every new version.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will display inside your navigation section …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you create, view and edit legal pages from your admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Screen)
You have the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, affiliate/review sites, AdSense sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Page Type)
Select from various built-in legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – 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 website for more information about the benefits of using this plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your web presence …
Learn We have written an in-depth article about this plugin here:
Legal Suite Pro
(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 – 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 powered 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.
Go here for more info:
If using the services of lawyers to create your legal pages is out of your budget, consider implementing at least some form of legal protection on your site until you can afford to hire the services of a legal form or lawyer.
We want your business to be legally safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-prepared legal forms, or a WordPress legal pages plugin as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator Software allows you to quickly generate essential legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you do business online, you need to ensure that your website remains compliant with regulatory agencies and the terms of service and guidelines of third-party services and products that you may be promoting or advertising online. Your website or blog must comply with a whole range of regulations, many of which you may not even 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 cannot provide legal advice in this article. Do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with the law in your country or region.
Additional Legal Information
Here is a useful list of additional sites we suggest you visit to better understand what your site may require to stay compliant and meet its legal obligations:
- FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- Federal Trade Commission Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
- FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
- 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
Also …
- 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 the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress site using simple solutions.
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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)