Is your website compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any laws, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any companies whose services or products you are doing business with?
Online laws, regulations, and guidelines are designed to protect the rights of 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 will not excuse you from being slapped with a legal notice.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you promote anything on your site for commercial gain, you need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Better Business Bureau)
These laws affect several business activities, including:
- Any type of advertising, like pay-per-click advertising
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creators
- Bloggers
- etc.
If your site does not display certain legal pages (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t approve digital products for sale, PayPal could suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your applications, and you will not be allowed to promote various advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
In addition, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
The purpose of this guide is to make you aware that your website may be required to comply with legal requirements, the importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be recommending on your website, and that there are solutions that can help your site become fully compliant, such as the plugins discussed further below.
Does Your Website Comply With The Law?
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. As previously stated, this article is designed only to make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with the laws governing business practices online and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of 3rd-party companies whose services or products you recommend
The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant
Is your business at risk? Consider what the implications to your business would be if any of these situations were to take place:
- A user has a heart attack after using your online fitness program.
- The skin care products you sell as an affiliate gives a number of users skin rashes.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t spelled out exactly what you’ll do with their details.
- Someone copies your content and publishes it on their site.
- You have not divulged to visitors that you are marketing a product as an affiliate and could earn a sales commission if visitors purchase it.
- You have not spelled out the terms and conditions of your refund or return policies.
- A visitor claims that your testimonials are false and decides to sue you.
- You did not disclose in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
- Your site contains adult content and you didn’t take appropriate measures to restrict access by underage children.
Consider now these documented examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up their personal information to complete an offer they were promoting. 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 children’s private details.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping UIDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ 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% 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 cautions or lose access entirely to the Google program whose policies with the violation, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how easy it is to be exposed to the risk of litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Marketer
- AdSense Publisher
- Product Marketer
- Amazon Associate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Adult Content Publisher
- Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
- Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online
It’s imperative to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your online business complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Compliance With Third-Party Services Terms And Policies
Complying with third-party companies terms and policies is important.
You must let your site users know that your website complies will all legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only improves trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also required by most companies you interact with online.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Google requires your site to display certain information if using many of their products. This includes using features like Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Generating revenue online with your blogs using Google AdSense display advertising …
(Google AdSense - policy requirements)
Or promoting your site through Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you sell information-based products through companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will need to add certain legal pages to your site before your products are approved for sale in their network …
(Policy requirements for vendors selling via ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you include clear disclaimers and policy statements to visitors, especially if you plan to use product testimonials or endorsements …
(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant
New FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many business are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As documented on their website, this typically prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute site owners in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you plan to do any kind of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by ensuring that your website complies with all FTC guidelines and regulations.
There are many business resource sites that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. See our additional resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(It’s important to structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Don’t Forget Social Media Applications
If you are planning to create applications that integrate with your website, you will also be required to provide sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others with information about various legal pages …
(Apps that interface with social networking sites like Facebook also require compliance)
- If you are not sure whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote anything online via affiliate marketing, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay advertising, or driving visitors to your site using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to include on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts suspended.
- If you have ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
What Legal Information Pages Should I Add To My Website To Be Compliant?
If your website or blog lacks in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.
At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your website should help you stay out of trouble with many regulatory agencies and 3rd-party providers, and even help to avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the pages above, you may want to look into implementing any of the pages listed below where applicable:
- Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you sell or promote affiliate products and services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (if your website provides general money-making advice)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Use Of Media (if you provide users with access to download videos or audio files on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
It’s important to add correct disclosures to your website. For example:
- No Material Connection – This lets your visitors know that you are not being paid for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Lets your readers be aware that you may benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and purchase through your affiliate link.
- Sample Or review Copy – Lets site users know that you have received a sample or review copy of the product or service by the author or developer.
- Sponsored Post – Discloses to users that you were compensated in some way to write the article.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs visitors 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.
Adding Legal Content To Your WordPress 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 include them in your website.
Upload Legal Web Pages To Your Site
If someone prepares the legal content for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend adding a legal folder to your web server and uploading your legal pages to this folder (e.g. using FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your web server and upload pages using FTP)
You can then easily add a link to your pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu administration …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and clearly visible to all visitors. You can insert these into the sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your website or blog) so that visitors have access to legal information from every web page …
(It’s important to display links to legal pages on all of your website’s pages)
We have created a detailed tutorial on displaying links to pages on your sidebar menu here:
Templates
You can find downloadable attorney-drafted disclosures and forms and agreements by searching online, or by visiting sites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms – Attorney-prepared legal forms)
For more information, go here:
Another option is to purchase a set of website legal templates written by attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)
These legal pages were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with a simple quick search and replace to add your own business name and URL, then pasted into your 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 Federal Trade Commission guidelines brought into effect in 2012)
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page for each legal form you want to add to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your web server as previously described.
Go here for more details:
WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages
In addition to using templates, you can keep things really simple using a plugin.
Here are some legal WordPress plugins that you may be interested in checking out:
WordPress Legal Pages
(WP Legal Pages Plugin)
If the idea of creating legal pages manually feels too time-consuming for you, then consider installing WordPress Legal Pages instead …
The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s an affordable and well-supported plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you time.
Here are just some of the benefits of using the WP Legal Pages plugin:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the basic legal pages you need in a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages like every other WP page.
- Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any page on your website.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. Page unlocks and can be accessed only when the user agrees to your terms.
- Additional Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will display inside your main dashboard menu …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you create, view and edit your legal pages from your admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings)
The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites, affiliate sites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages – Page Type)
You can also select from several built-in legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – 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
Visit this website to learn more 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 online business …
Learn more about the plugin here:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro For WordPress)
Legal Suite Pro 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. You can have legal pages installed and set up on your site in one minute or less and the plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use the plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell).
More info:
If hiring lawyers to create your legal pages is out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic form of legal protection on your website until you can afford legal services.
We want your website to be protected!
Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (it’s FREE!), or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-drafted legal content, or plugins as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates essential 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 engage in any form of commercial activity online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines required by third-party products and services that you may be promoting or offering online. Your digital presence must comply with a whole set of regulations, many of which you may not 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 do not offer legal advice in this article. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.
Additional Resources
Below is a time-saving list of websites we suggest you visit to better understand what may be required of your website to remain 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
- 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
- United States Patent and Trademark Office
- United States 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 this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your website.
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