Is your WordPress site legally compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any rules or regulations, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose services or products you promote or use?
Online laws, regulations, and guidelines were designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to any person who markets, sells or promotes goods or services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements will not prevent you from being slapped with a legal notice.
New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you promote anything on your site for material gain, you need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the (US based) Better Business Bureau (BBB). Do a search online for “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 legal implications for various business activities, including:
- Any kind of advertising, like 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 third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your applications, and you won’t be allowed to enrol in a number of advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
Additionally, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
This article explains the importance of having a compliant website and how to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress website using simple solutions.
Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article. Do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all laws in your country or region.
Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant
Consider for a moment what would happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- A customer has a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online workout program.
- The skin care products you sell as an affiliate gives someone skin rashes.
- Your opt-in list displays a statement informing subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not defined what you will do with it.
- Someone copies your content and publishes it on their own website.
- There is no statement on your website making your visitors aware that you are marketing a product as an affiliate and could receive a financial benefit if visitors buy it via your link.
- You didn’t spell out the terms and conditions of your return policies.
- Someone claims your testimonials are all 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 site publishes adult information and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to keep underaged children from accessing it.
Consider now the documented examples of costly compliance breaches described:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up personal information to complete an offer they were promoting. 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 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 dollars in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-picked websites, more than 90% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least two 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 cautions or lose access to the Google program whose policies with the infringement, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how you could become exposed to the risk of litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA (Cost Per Action) or CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- Network Marketer
- Affiliate Product Marketer
- AdSense Publisher
- Niche Marketer
- Amazon Associate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
- Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online
it’s important to ensure that your online business stays legally compliant.
Compliance With 3rd-Party Services
Leading online companies and government agencies that regulate trade emphasize the need and importance of complying with the terms and policies of service providers.
You are expected to let your visitors know that your website complies with all necessary laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and confidence in your site, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you will engage with online.
For example:
Google requires websites to display certain information when using many of their services and features. This includes Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Earning revenue online with your online properties with Google AdSense online advertising …
(Google AdSense - policy requirements)
And even promoting your products or services using Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you sell products online via merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you are required to add various legal pages to your website before they will approve your products for sale …
(ClickBank – policy requirements for product sellers)
The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you display clear disclaimers and policy statements to visitors, especially when using testimonials or product endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Be Compliant
New FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many sites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As is already the case, this typically ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting website owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you do any type of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business by making sure that your site complies with all FTC guidelines and regulations.
Various online business resources provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. See the references and useful resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(You must word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Social Media Apps Also Have Compliance Requirements
If you are planning to create social networking applications for your website, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with access to 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 sites like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote services or products on your site as an affiliate marketer, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay ads, or using Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to display on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
- If you’ve been wondering if “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 services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)
Basic Legal Pages To Add To Your Site
If you suspect that your website or blog lacks in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
Adding the following compliance pages to your website should help your site keep out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and external providers, and avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Page
- Privacy Policy
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to look into adding one or more of these pages:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you sell or promote affiliate products or services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Linking Policy
- Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides advice about health or medical areas)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Use Of Media (e.g. if you allow users to download videos or audio files on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding the right disclosure information is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs users that you’re not being paid for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Lets readers know that you will benefit financially if they buy through affiliate links on your site.
- Sample/Review Copy – Explains to visitors that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product or service by the author or product developer.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets site users know that you were compensated in some form to write the article.
- 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 display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Compliance Pages To Your WordPress Website
Ideally, you should have a lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once this has been created, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Uploading Legal Web 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 server, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend adding a legal folder to your web server and uploading your legal pages to this folder (e.g. using FTP) …
(Upload legal pages to your web server using FTP)
You can then add a link to your pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu administration …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
Where To Display Legal Pages On Your Website
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 (or the footer section of your site) to ensure that visitors can access the information from all of your site’s pages …
(Display links to your legal pages on all of your website’s pages)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on adding links to pages on your sidebar menu, see this step-by-step tutorial:
Templates
You can find downloadable attorney-drafted disclosures and forms and agreements just by searching online, or going to sites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
More information:
Another option is to download a package of cut & paste legal templates drafted by attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website legal templates were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with simple search and replace to add your own business name and URL, then pasted into your legal web pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Page Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates new FTC regulations and guidelines that came into effect on March 2012)
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service & Conditions of Use: with inter- & intra-page redundancy, Contra Proferentem provision, reservation of rights, and exclusive social media admonition.
You can either create a new page for every legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload the pages to your server as described previously.
More information:
Legal Page Plugins
In addition to using legal templates, another option is to use WordPress plugins.
Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress-driven websites worth looking into:
WP Legal Pages
(WP Legal Pages Plugin)
If the idea of creating legal pages manually feels too time-consuming for you, then consider using a plugin like WP Legal Pages …
This plugin is not free, but it’s a low-priced and well-supported premium plugin that will make the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website much easier and save you many headaches.
Here are just some of the benefits of using the WP Legal Pages:
- Built-in Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the legal pages you need in around 3 minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
- Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and easily 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 legal pages like any other WordPress page.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to any of your WordPress pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any WP page.
- Forced Options – Force page lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed only when users agree to your terms.
- New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature is added to your navigation section …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Menu)
This lets you create, view and edit legal pages from the admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Screen)
With WP Legal Pages, you can easily create legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review sites, e-commerce sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Page Type)
Select from a number of pre-written legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Built-In 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
Go here to learn more about using this plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users with over 20 customizable legal page templates for your site …
Learn more here:
Legal Suite Pro
(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 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 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 plugin licensing is flexible, allowing you to install and use the plugin on all of your websites.
Visit this website for more details:
If using the services of a lawyer to create your legal pages is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic type of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional assistance.
We want your business to be safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-prepared legal templates, or a WordPress plugin as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator Software allows you to quickly generate basic legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you do business online, you need to make sure that your site stays compliant with regulatory agencies and any terms of service and guidelines of 3rd-party products and services that you may decide to promote or sell online. Your website must comply with various regulations, some 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?
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice on our website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with the law concerning your specific business.
References And Resources
Below is a time-saving list of additional sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what your business requires to stay 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
- 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
Additionally …
- Analytics Help – Policy requirements for Google Analytics Advertising Features
- Google AdSense Program Policies Explained
- AdSense Help – Required Content
- Google AdWords – Information Collection And Use
- Google 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 compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website or blog.
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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