Is your website legally compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any laws, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any companies whose products or services you do business with?
Online laws, regulations, and guidelines are designed to protect consumers and apply to any person who markets, sells or promotes products and services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law won’t protect someone from taking legal action against you.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for commercial gain, then you must follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau, also known as BBB. Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(BBB – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The new laws affect various business activities, including:
- Any kind of advertising, e.g. inline ads, Google Adsense, etc.
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creation
- Bloggers
- etc.
Without certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t allow you to list digital products, PayPal could suspend your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will reject your applications, and you won’t be accepted into a number of advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
If your digital presence is not in compliance, you could also face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
The purpose of this article is to help make you aware that your website(s) are subject to legal requirements, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be selling online, and that there are solutions that can help your sites become compliant, such as the tools listed further below.
Is Your Website Breaking Rules Or Regulations?
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice about your website or business. You must do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all laws and regulations concerning your specific business.
Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important
Consider for a moment what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:
- A user suffers a heart attack after they use your online fitness workout.
- The skin care lotion you sell as an affiliate marketer gives a number of users an allergic reaction.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you have not described exactly 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 making your site users aware that you’re an affiliate for the product you’re promoting and will get paid a sales commission if they buy products using your link.
- You didn’t spell out the terms and conditions of your refund policies.
- Online visitors claim that your testimonials are false and try to sue you as a result.
- You have not disclosed that you received a free copy in a product review.
- Your website includes adult content and you did not take appropriate measures to keep underaged children from accessing it.
Consider too the following documented examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up their personal information (including credit card information to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer copped a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private information.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape Users IDs. Many internet marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independent 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 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in violation of 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 notices or lose access to the Google program they had violated, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how easy it is to become exposed to the risks of litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA or PPA Marketer
- Network Marketer
- Affiliate Product Promoter
- AdWords User
- Product Marketer
- Amazon Affiliate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online
it’s important to ensure that your website or blog has the right legal pages and clearly accessible to all you site visitors.
Compliance With Third-Party Companies
Complying with 3rd-party services terms and policies is important.
You are expected to let your site users know that your business complies with legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only increases trust and confidence in your website, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you will do business with.
Here are just some examples:
Google requires you to display certain information when using many of their services. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Making money online with your blog with Google AdSense …
(Google AdSense ads policy requirements)
And even promoting your products via Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell digital products via companies like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will need to add various legal pages to your site before they will approve your products for sale …
(Policy requirements product vendors selling through ClickBank)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to add clear disclaimers and policy statements on your website, especially regarding the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Comply
New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many business are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has already been the case, this typically ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting site owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you do any type of selling 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 guidelines.
Many online business resources provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to useful resources at the end of this article …
(Structuring your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of the law)
Social Media Applications Also Have Compliance Requirements
If you plan to create apps that will integrate with your site, you will also be required to provide sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others with information about your legal pages …
(Facebook apps also require compliance)
- If you are not sure whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of companies like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting products or services on your site via affiliate marketing, or monetizing your pages with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay ads, or use 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 shut down.
- If you’ve ever wondered 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 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)
What Legal Information Do You Need To Add To Your Website To Be Compliant?
If your website or blog is falling short in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.
Adding the following compliance pages to your website will help your site keep out of trouble with many regulatory authorities and third-party service providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to consider implementing one or more of these compliance pages:
- Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Linking Policy
- Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides general content about health or medical areas)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Use Of Media (if you allow media downloads on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
Adding correct disclosure information is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – This lets users be aware that you will not be receiving any kind of payment for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Lets visitors be aware that you will be compensated if they purchase through an affiliate link.
- Sample Or review Copy – Lets your visitors be aware that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product or service by the author or product developer.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets users be aware that you have been compensated in some way to write the post.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets readers 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 online publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
Adding Compliance Pages To Your Website
Ideally, you should have a lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once this has been done, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Uploading Legal Pages Manually
If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend creating a legal folder in your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory (e.g. via FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your web server and upload pages via FTP)
You can then add links to these legal pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …
(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and clearly accessible to all visitors. You can add these to your WordPress sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your website or blog) so that visitors have access to the information from every page …
(Display legal pages to users on all of your site’s pages)
We have written a detailed tutorial on adding links to pages on your WordPress sidebar here:
Store-Bought Legal Templates
You can easily find attorney-drafted downloadable forms and agreements by searching online, or by visiting sites like the ones shown below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms)
Go here for more details:
Another option is to purchase a package of legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website legal templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with a quick search and replace to add your own business name and URL, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Forms include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance
- Privacy Policy: Google, DART, etc.
- Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page for each legal form you want added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload the pages to your web server as described earlier.
To learn more, visit this website:
Plugins – Legal Pages
As well as using legal templates, you can simplify things using a plugin.
Here are some plugins for WordPress-driven websites and blogs worth looking into:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)
If setting up legal pages manually feels too time-consuming for you, then consider using a plugin like WP Legal Pages instead …
The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably low-priced and well-supported plugin that will help make the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site a lot easier and save you time.
Some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages plugin are:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
- Fully 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 – WordPress content editor lets you edit legal pages like any page on your website.
- Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other WP page.
- Forced Options – Force page lock down. Page unlocks when users agree to your legal terms.
- Additional Features – More features are being added to this plugin with every new version.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will display inside your WordPress dashboard section …
(WP Legal Pages – Menu)
This allows you to create, view and edit your legal pages from your admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Screen)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, affiliate sites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page type drop down menu)
You can also choose from various pre-configured legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Pre-configured 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
To learn more this useful plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-powered websites that contains over 20 customizable legal pages for your online business …
Go here to learn more:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro 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 – 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 powered 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 the plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell).
More info:
If using the services of a lawyer to create your online legal documentation is currently out of your budget, 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 legally safe!
Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (for FREE!), or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal documents, or a WordPress plugin - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator lets you easily generate basic legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you do business online, it’s important that your website stays compliant with regulatory agencies and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines provided by third-party sites that you may be promoting or endorsing online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
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 are not offering legal advice here. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website fully complies with the law concerning your specific business.
Additional Legal Information
Here is a time-saving list of sites we suggest you visit to better understand what may be required of your website to comply and meet 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 – 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
- United States Copyright Office
Plus …
- 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 the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information above to quickly add essential legal pages to your website.
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