Is your WordPress site compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any laws, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose products or services you do business with?
Online laws, regulations, and guidelines are designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to anyone who sells, markets or promotes products and services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements will not prevent someone from taking legal action against you.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for commercial gain, then you will need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau, also known as BBB. Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Better Business Bureau)
These laws affect various online business activities, including:
- Any kind of advertising, including Google AdWords
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creators
- Blogging
- etc.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank will not allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal could suspend your account, Facebook could reject your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote a range of advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
More importantly, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
This article explains the importance of having a legally compliant website and explains simple and inexpensive ways to make your WordPress website or blog legally compliant quickly and easily.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice. 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 pertaining to your business.
Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant
Consider for one minute what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:
- A person suffers a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online workout program.
- The skin cream you sell as an affiliate gives a number of users an adverse reaction.
- Your opt-in list provides a statement letting subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t spelled out exactly what you’ll do with the information you’ve collected.
- Someone copies your content and puts it up on their website.
- There is no statement on your site letting your visitors know that you are marketing a product as an affiliate and could derive a financial benefit if visitors buy it.
- You don’t spell out the terms and conditions of your refund/return policies.
- Someone claims that the testimonials on your site are false and decides to sue you.
- You have not disclosed in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
- Your site publishes adult-related content and you didn’t take sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged children.
Consider also the documented case studies of costly compliance breaches described:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up personal information (including credit card details to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer was slapped with a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private information about children.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping Users IDs. 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 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% were in breach of at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had broken 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 cautions or lose access 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 being targeted for non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA, CPC or PPA Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Product Marketer
- AdSense Publisher
- Info Product Marketer
- Amazon Associate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
You need to ensure that your website stays legally compliant.
Compliance With Third-Party Services Terms And Policies
Big companies and government agencies that regulate trade in various countries emphasize the need of observing the terms and policies of service providers.
You must let your site users know that your business complies with legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only increases trust and confidence in your business, it’s also a requirement of many companies you will do business with.
For example:
Google requires websites to display certain information if using their services. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Making money online with your blogs with Google AdSense advertising …
(Google AdSense online advertising - policy requirements)
Or promoting your products or services through Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you plan to sell information-based products through companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will need to add a number of legal pages to your website before they will approve your products for selling via their marketplace …
(Policy requirements product vendors using ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to add clear disclaimers and statements on your site, especially concerning the use of testimonials or product endorsements …
(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Comply
FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many websites are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this typically prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you plan to do any type of business 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 ensuring that your website is compliant with FTC regulations.
Various business resources provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. We provide references and links to resources to some of these at the end of this article …
(It’s important to word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Social Media Applications Also Require Compliance
If you are planning to develop applications that will integrate with your site, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others require you to provide access to various legal pages …
(Apps that interface with social networking sites also require compliance)
- If you are unsure whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of service providers like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote products or services online as an affiliate marketer, or generating revenue 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 provide on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts shut down.
- If you’ve ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use)
Essential Legal Pages You Should Include In Your Site To Ensure Compliance
If your web site is lacking in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your website will help your business stay out of trouble with many consumer protection agencies and 3rd-party service providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above, you may want to look into including any of the pages listed below where applicable:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you provide information about affiliate products or services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Linking Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides general financial information)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Video/Audio Terms Of Use (if you provide users with access to videos or audio files on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
It’s important to add correct disclosure information to your site. For example:
- No Material Connection – Disclosure that informs your readers that you are not receiving compensation for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Lets your readers know that you may derive some form of financial benefit if they act on your recommendation and buy through your affiliate links.
- Review Or Sample Copy – Lets visitors know that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product you’re writing about by the author or developer.
- Sponsored Post – Informs your readers that you have been compensated in some form to write the content.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs your 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 display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Pages Content To Your Website
Ideally, you should have your lawyer 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
If someone prepares the legal content for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend adding a legals directory to your web server and uploading your legal pages to this directory via FTP …
(Upload legal pages to your server via FTP)
You can then add links to your pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu admin area …
(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)
Where To Display Legal Web Pages On Your Site
Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and clearly accessible to visitors. You can add these to the WordPress sidebar (or the footer section of your site) to ensure that visitors have access to legal information from every web page …
(It’s important to display links to legal information on all of your site’s pages)
We have written a detailed tutorial on adding links to pages on your sidebar using widgets here:
Legal Templates
You can easily find downloadable attorney-drafted forms and agreements just by searching online, or by going to websites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms – Legal forms)
More info:
Alternatively, you can download a set of website legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Website Legal Pages)
These templates were written by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with a quick search and replace to insert your own details, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance
- Privacy Policy
- ToS & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new WordPress page for each legal form you want to add to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload these to your web server as described previously.
More information:
Legal Pages – WordPress Plugins
In addition to using templates, you can keep things very simple by using WordPress plugins.
Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress-powered sites worth looking into:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)
If the idea of manually creating legal pages for your site feels too time-consuming for you, then consider choosing a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages instead …
WordPress Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you many headaches.
Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages:
- Pre-written Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the legal pages you need in a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- Fully Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Editable Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like every other page on your website.
- Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
- 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 site.
- Forced Options – Force page lockdown. Page unlocks and can be accessed when user agrees to your terms.
- New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature will display inside your main WordPress dashboard menu …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you view, create and edit your legal pages from the admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Screen)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review websites, AdSense sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Page Type)
Choose from various pre-configured 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 site for more details about this plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
total website compliance & disclaimer solution …
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
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 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 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 the plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell).
Go here for more details:
If using the services of lawyers to create your legal documentation is currently out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional assistance from a solicitor.
We want your business to be legally safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal forms, or plugins as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator quickly generates essential legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you are making money online, you need to ensure that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines of third-party products and services that you may be promoting or recommending online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect the rights of 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?
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice here. 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 in your country or region.
Additional Legal Information
Here is a useful list of websites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what your business requires to stay compliant 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
- Better Business Bureau Website
- 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
- 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
We hope this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now