Is your WordPress site legally compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking the law, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose products or services you do business with?
As the digital economy continues growing at an extraordinary rate and rules constantly change, it’s absolutely essential that you stay on top of what’s happening and make sure that your website remains legal, especially if having an online presence plays a significant part in your business strategy.
New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for profit, you will need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – Better Business Bureau)
The introduction of these new laws has legal implications for various online business categories, including:
- Any kind of advertising, e.g. display advertising
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
If your site does not display certain pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t allow you to sell digital products, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will reject your applications, and you won’t be allowed to enrol in most advertising and online marketing networks.
If your web presence is not in compliance, you could face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
This article explains why it’s important to have a legally compliant website and how to quickly and easily add legal pages to your website.
Is Your Website Compliant?
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based in.
Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant
Consider what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- Someone suffers a heart attack after they use your online fitness workout.
- The skin cream you promote as an affiliate gives a number of users an adverse reaction.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t spelled out exactly what you plan to do with the details you’ve collected.
- Someone steals your content and puts it up on their website.
- There is no statement on your site letting your site visitors know that you’re an affiliate for the product you’re endorsing that you will earn a sales commission if they end up buying via your affiliate link.
- You did not spell out the conditions of your refund/return policies.
- Online visitors claim that your testimonials are misleading and try to sue you.
- You have not disclosed that you received a free copy in a product review.
- Your site publishes adult content and you didn’t take appropriate measures to keep underaged children from accessing it.
Consider too the documented case studies of costly compliance breaches described:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up their personal information to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, they’re now required to give everyone he does business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
- A social networking app developer received 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 Users IDs. Many internet marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% had broken at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had infringed 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 entirely 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 becoming a target of litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA or PPA Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Product Promoter
- AdWords User
- Niche Publisher
- Amazon Associate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
- Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product
It’s vitally important to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your website has the right legal pages and clearly accessible to your site users.
Compliance With Third-Party Services Terms And Policies
Compliance with third-party companies terms and policies is important.
You are expected to 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 a requirement of most companies you engage with.
Here are just some examples:
Google requires websites to display legal information when using many of their services or features. This includes using features like Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Making money online with your website with Google AdSense …
(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)
And even promoting your products through Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell information-based products using places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will need to add legal pages before your products can be approved for sale …
(Policy requirements digital product vendors selling via ClickBank)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to include clear disclaimers and policies to visitors, especially when concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Website 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 flaunt) these requirements. As is already the case, this will most likely prompt the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies 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 is not physically located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by ensuring that your site complies with FTC regulations.
Various sites provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. We provide a number of references and links to resources at the end of this article …
(You must structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Don’t Forget Social Media Apps
If you plan to develop social networking applications for your site, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with access to various legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are unsure whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of service providers like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote services or products online as an affiliate marketer, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, or driving visitors to your website with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to display on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts shut down.
- If you have been wondering whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)
Essential Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Site
If your website or blog is lacking in aspects of compliance, then this section will help you.
At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your site should help your site keep out of trouble with many consumer protection authorities and external providers, and avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):
- About Us Page
- Contact Page
- Privacy Policy
- Terms And Conditions
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above, you may want to consider implementing any of the following pages if applicable:
- Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Linking Policy
- Health Disclaimers (if your website provides health or medical content)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Audio/Video Terms Of Use (e.g. if you provide users with access to videos or audio files on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding correct disclosure information is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Discloses to site users that you are not receiving any kind of compensation for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Lets your visitors be aware that you may derive some form of financial benefit if they purchase through your affiliate link.
- Sample Or review Copy – Disclosure that informs visitors that you have received a review or sample copy of the product or service you’re reviewing.
- Sponsored Post – Lets users know that you have been compensated in some form to write the post.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs readers 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 To Your WordPress Site
Ideally, you will consult a lawyer and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once these have been completed, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Uploading Legal Pages To Your Site
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 creating a legal directory in your web server and uploading your legal pages to this directory (e.g. via FTP) …
(Upload legal pages to your server using FTP)
You can then add links to these legal pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu feature …
(WordPress Menu)
Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and clearly accessible to all site visitors. You can insert these into your sidebar menu (or place them in the footer of your website or blog) to ensure that visitors will be able to access legal information from all of your site’s pages …
(Display legal information to visitors on all of your website’s pages)
We have written a detailed tutorial on displaying links to pages on your sidebar menu using widgets here:
Using Ready-Made Templates
You can find attorney-drafted downloadable website forms and agreements by searching online, or going to websites like the ones shown below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms – Legal forms)
Go here for more details:
Alternatively, you can purchase a set of legal templates written by legal attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages)
These legal templates were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with search and replace to insert your own business name and URL, then pasted into your pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Form Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates Federal Trade Commission regulations and guidelines brought into effect on March 2012)
- Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
- 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 WordPress page for each legal form you want to add to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload these to your server as described earlier.
More info:
Legal Pages – WordPress Plugins
As well as using cut & paste templates, you can simplify things using WordPress plugins.
Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress-powered sites that you should check out:
WP Legal Pages
(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to spend time creating legal pages manually, then consider using WP Legal Pages instead …
WP Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a very low-priced and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will help make the task of creating and implementing legal pages on your site much easier and save you a great deal of time and effort.
Some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages plugin are:
- Built-in Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal 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 a few minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
- Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Editable Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages just like every other WP page.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to your pages and the information will 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 WP page.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed when user agrees to your legal terms.
- New Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will appear inside your WP dashboard menu section …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)
This allows you to create, edit and view legal pages from the admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings Area)
You can easily create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, affiliate sites, medical sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Create different legal pages)
Select from a number of pre-written legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages – Pre-configured 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 to learn more about using this plugin:
Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users containing over twenty customizable legal page templates for your digital presence …
Learn more 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 And Conditions
- Earnings Disclaimer
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress – 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 one minute or less and the license allows you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
Go here for more information:
If using the services of lawyers to create your legal documentation is currently 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 site to be safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal page templates, or plugins as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator Software allows you to quickly generate basic legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
***
As we’ve previously pointed out, if you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or are planning to), it’s important that your website complies with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online and any guidelines and terms of service provided by 3rd-party services and products that you may be promoting or using online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect 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?
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements concerning your specific business.
Additional Legal Information
Below is a useful list of additional sites we recommend you visit to better understand what may be required of your site to comply 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 – BBB
- 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
Plus …
- 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
Hopefully, this article has helped you understand the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your site.
***
"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie