Is your website legally compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any laws, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose services or products you are doing business with?
As the digital realm continues to grow at an overwhelming speed and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s important that you try to stay informed about what’s happening and ensure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your online presence is important in the success of your business strategy.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you promote anything on your website for commercial gain, you will need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau, also known as 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)
The introduction of these new laws has consequences for several online business activities, including:
- Any type of advertising, including Google AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
Without certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t approve your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account, Facebook could reject your web applications, and you will not be accepted into a range of advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
If your website is not in compliance, you could face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
The purpose of this post is to help make you aware that your website(s) are subject to certain legal requirements according to laws that govern online business practices, the importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose services or products you may be advertising online, and that there are easy solutions that can help your site become more compliant, such as the plugins that we discuss further below.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice about your website or business. As previously stated, the aim of this article is to make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with federal, regional or local laws and regulations governing online business practices and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose services or products you recommend on your website
Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant
Is your business at risk? Consider what would happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- A user has a heart attack after purchasing your online fitness workout.
- The skin care products you sell as an affiliate marketer gives someone an allergic reaction.
- You’ve informed your subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you have not clearly informed them what you’ll do with the information you’ve collected.
- Someone steals your content and puts it up on their own site.
- You haven’t informed your site visitors that you are promoting a product as an affiliate that you may earn a financial benefit if visitors purchase via your affiliate link.
- You didn’t spell out the conditions of your refund/return policies.
- Someone claims that your testimonials are false and tries to sue you because of it.
- You did not disclose that you received a free copy of a product you reviewed.
- Your site contains adult-related information and you have not taken appropriate measures to restrict access by underage persons.
Consider now these documented case studies of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up personal information (including credit card details to complete his offer. 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 private details about children.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping 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 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, more than 90% had breached at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had breached at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were breaking 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 infringement, 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 (Cost Per Action) Marketer
- Network Marketer
- Affiliate Product Marketer
- AdSense Publisher
- Niche Publisher
- Amazon Affiliate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online
It’s imperative to make sure that your website or blog has the right legal pages and information displayed to all site users.
Compliance With 3rd-Party Companies
Big companies and government agencies that regulate trade emphasize the importance of observing the terms and policies of service providers.
You must let your site visitors know that your website complies with all necessary laws and recommended guidelines. This not only increases trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also required by most companies you engage with.
Here are just some examples:
Google requires you to display certain information when using their services. This includes Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Earning revenue with your blog using Google AdSense display advertising …
(Google AdSense ads policy requirements)
And even promoting your services via Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you plan to sell information products via companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will be required to add various legal pages before your products can be approved for sale …
(ClickBank – policy requirements for vendors)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to add clear disclaimers and statements to visitors, especially regarding the use of testimonials or product endorsements …
(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant
New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many business are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this typically prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you do any kind of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business interests by ensuring that your website is compliant with FTC regulations and guidelines.
Various resources online provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. We provide references to some of these at the end of this article …
(Structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Don’t Forget Social Media Apps
If you are planning to develop apps for your website users, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others with information about your legal pages …
(Facebook apps also require compliance)
- If you are not sure whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of service providers 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 using affiliate marketing, or make money online with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or driving visitors to your website with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to display on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts shut down.
- If you’ve ever wondered if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business interests.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
What Compliance Pages Should I Add To My Website To Be Covered Against Legal Compliance Issues?
If you suspect that your web site falls short in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.
Adding the following legal pages to your site should keep your business out of trouble with many regulatory authorities and external service providers, and even help to avoid potential legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Page
- Privacy Policy
- Terms & Conditions
- Website Disclaimer
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above pages, you may want to look into including any of the following pages where applicable:
- Affiliate Agreement (if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Linking Policy
- Health Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides health or medical advice)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Video/Audio Terms Of Use (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 – This lets your readers be aware that you will not receive compensation for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Disclosure that informs your readers that you may be compensated if they act on your recommendation and purchase through affiliate links on your site.
- Review Or Sample Copy – Informs site users that you have received a sample or review copy of the product or service by the author or developer.
- Sponsored Post – Discloses to site users that you have been compensated in some form to write the content.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets your visitors 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 show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Pages Content To Your Website
Ideally, you should consult lawyers and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once this has been completed, 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 HTML format, you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend adding a legals folder to your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder (e.g. using FTP) …
(Upload legal pages to your server via FTP)
You can then easily add links to your legal pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu administration …
(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are fully up-to-date and display clearly to all site visitors. You can insert these into the sidebar menu (or place them in the footer section of your site) to ensure that visitors will be able to access the information from every web page …
(It’s important to display legal information to users on all of your website’s pages)
We have created a detailed tutorial about displaying links to pages on your sidebar menu using widgets here:
Use Ready-Made Templates
You can find downloadable attorney-drafted disclosures and internet forms and agreements by searching online, or by going to websites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
(FindLegalForms.com – Attorney-prepared legal forms)
For more details, go here:
Alternatively, you can purchase a package of cut & paste website legal templates written by legal attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Website Legal Pages)
These legal templates were written by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with search and replace to add your own details, then pasted into your legal web pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Forms include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects new Federal Trade Commission guidelines that came into effect in 2012)
- Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
- Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new WordPress page for every 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 previously.
Go here to learn more:
WordPress Legal Plugins
As well as using copy & paste legal templates, another option for adding legal pages to your website is to use WordPress plugins.
Here are some legal plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:
WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to bother with creating legal pages manually, then consider using WP Legal Pages instead …
The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably affordable and well-supported plugin that will help make the task of creating and implementing legal pages on your website a lot easier and save you loads of headaches.
Some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages are:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the basic legal pages you need in a few minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
- Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and 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 just like any other page on your website.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – Add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your content when published.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any page on your site.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks when user agrees to your terms.
- Additional Features – More features are being added to this plugin with every new version.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will be added to your main navigation section …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Menu)
This allows you to view, create and edit your legal pages from the admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings)
With WPLegal Pages, you have the option of easily creating legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review websites, medical sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Type of Site drop down menu)
Choose from several built-in legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – 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 website to learn more about using this great plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-driven websites containing over twenty customizable legal page templates for your web presence …
Learn more here:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro For WordPress)
Legal Suite Pro 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 Service
- 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 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.
To learn more, visit this site:
If using the services of legal experts to create your legal pages is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic form of legal protection on your website until you can afford legal services.
We want your site to be legally safe!
Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (it’s FREE!), or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal forms, or plugins as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates basic legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you engage in any form of business online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your site is compliant with regulatory agencies and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines of 3rd-party services and products that you may decide to promote or offer online. Your website must comply with a whole range of laws and regulatory guidelines, many of which you may not even be aware of.
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?
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice on our website. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements pertaining to your business.
References And Resources
Here is a time-saving list of sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what your website may require to stay compliant and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:
- 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 Website
- 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
Also …
- 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
- 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 the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your website.
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