Is your website compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking any laws, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any companies whose products or services you are endorsing or selling?
As digital business continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules constantly change, it’s vital that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains compliant, especially if having an online presence plays a significant role in your business strategy.
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 website for material gain, you will need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, 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 to learn more.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The introduction of these laws affect several business categories, including:
- Any type of advertising, like Google AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal may suspend your account, Facebook could disapprove your web applications, and you will not be allowed to enrol in many advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
In addition, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
The purpose of this guide is to make you aware that your website(s) are required to comply with various legalities, the importance of complying with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose services or products you may be endorsing online, and that there are easy solutions that can help your websites become fully compliant, such as the plugins discussed further below.
Is Your Site Breaking Rules Or Regulations?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not providing 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 legal requirements in your country or region.
Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important
Is your business at risk? Consider for a minute what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- A customer suffers a cardiac arrest after they use your online fitness workout.
- The skin care products you sell as an affiliate gives someone an adverse reaction.
- Your opt-in list displays a statement informing subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t clearly spelled out what you will do with their details.
- Someone steals your content and publishes it on their own website.
- There is no statement on your website or blog making your site users aware that you are endorsing a product as an affiliate and may earn a commission if they buy it via your affiliate link.
- You didn’t spell out the terms of your refund or return policies.
- Online visitors claim that your testimonials are all fake and decide to sue you as a result.
- You have not disclosed in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
- Your website includes adult content and you have not taken sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged children.
Consider also the real examples 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. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer was slapped with a whopping $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 does not allow users to scrape UIDs. 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 independent 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% were breaking at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had broken 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 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 exposed to litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA or PPA Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Product Marketer
- AdSense Publisher
- Product Publisher
- Amazon Associate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
You need to ensure that your digital presence has the right legal pages and information displayed to site users.
Complying With 3rd-Party Services Terms And Policies
Leading online companies and government regulatory agencies emphasize the importance of complying with the terms and policies of service providers.
You must let your site users know that your website complies will all laws and recommended guidelines. This not only improves trust and confidence in your website, it’s also a requirement of most companies you do business with.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Google requires websites to display legal information if using their products. This includes Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Earning revenue with your WordPress blog using Google AdSense …
(Google AdSense online advertising policy requirements)
And even promoting your services using Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you plan to sell information products with places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will be required to add a number of legal pages to your website before your products are approved for sale …
(ClickBank – policy requirements)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you include clear disclaimers and policies on your site, especially if you plan to sell products online using product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Comply
New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many business are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As documented on their website, this often 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 selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. you should protect your business by ensuring that your site is compliant with all FTC guidelines and regulations.
Many business resource sites provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. See the additional references and resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(You must structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Social Media Applications Also Require Compliance
If you plan to develop applications for your site, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others require you to provide access to various legal pages …
(Apps that integrate with social networks also require compliance)
- If you are unsure whether you may be 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 anything on your site via affiliate marketing, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, or driving visitors to your website using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to include on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts terminated.
- If you have ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)
Common Legal Pages You Should Include In Your Website To Ensure Compliance
If you suspect that your website is lacking in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your site will help you stay out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and external providers, and even help to avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms Of Use
- Website Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to consider adding any of the pages listed below if applicable:
- Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Linking Policy
- Health Disclaimers (if your website provides general advice about health or medical areas)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Video/Audio Terms Of Use (if you allow users to download media on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding correct disclosure information is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – This lets your visitors be aware that you are not receiving any kind of compensation for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Disclosure that informs visitors that you may be compensated if they act on your recommendation and purchase through one of your affiliate links.
- Sample/Review Copy – Lets readers know that you have received a sample or review copy of the product by the author or product developer.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets your readers be aware that you have been compensated in some form to write the content.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs users 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 show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
Adding Compliance Pages To Your Site
Ideally, you will consult a lawyer or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this done, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Upload Legal Pages To Your Website
If someone prepares the legal content for you in standard web page format (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend creating a legals directory on your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory (e.g. using FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your server and upload pages via FTP)
You can then easily add a link to these legal pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …
(WordPress Menu)
Where To Display Legal Pages On Your Site
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and display clearly to visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to the sidebar menu (or the footer of your website or blog) to ensure that users have access to legal information from all your pages …
(It’s important to display links to legal information to visitors on all of your website’s pages)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on adding links to pages on your sidebar menu using widgets, see this tutorial:
Templates
You can easily find attorney-drafted downloadable forms and agreements by searching online, or by going to websites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms – Attorney-prepared legal forms)
To learn more, visit this site:
Alternatively, you can purchase a package of legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)
These templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a simple quick search and replace to add your own business details, then pasted into your pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Form Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance
- Privacy Policy: Google, DoubleClick DART, etc.
- ToS & Conditions of Use.
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 web server as previously described.
Visit this site to learn more:
Legal Page Plugins
In addition to using legal templates, you can keep things really simple using a plugin.
Here are some legal WordPress plugins worth looking into:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin
(WP Legal Pages Plugin)
If creating legal pages manually seems too time-consuming for you, then consider installing WP Legal Pages instead …
WordPress Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a low-priced and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you loads of headaches.
Some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages are:
- Built-in Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
- Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like any WP page.
- Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when published.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like every other page on your website.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed only when users agree to your terms.
- Additional Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will display inside your main dashboard area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you view, create and edit legal pages from your admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings)
The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites with products, review websites, AdSense sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Create different legal pages)
Select from various pre-configured legal templates …
(WP 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
For more details about this plugin, visit the plugin site:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
complete website compliance & disclaimer solution …
For a detailed article about this plugin go here:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro For WordPress)
Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress 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 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. Your legal pages can be installed and set up on your site in less than one minute and the plugin licensing is flexible, allowing 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 implementing at least some basic type of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional legal services.
We want your website to be safe!
Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (it’s FREE!), or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal forms, or a legal pages plugin - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator lets you quickly generate necessary legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you do any kind of business online, it’s important that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service provided by third-party sites that you may decide to promote or use online. Your digital presence must comply with a number 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?
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.
Additional Information
Below is a time-saving list of sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your site to stay compliant and meet legal obligations:
- Federal Trade Commission 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
- United States Patent and Trademark Office
- US Copyright Office
In Addition …
- 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
We hope you have found this article useful and that it has helped you understand why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your site using inexpensive solutions.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group