One of the worst things that can happen to a business owner is to break the law.
As the digital way of life continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vital that you try to stay on top of what’s happening and ensure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if your web presence is important in the success of your overall business strategy.
New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you promote anything on your site for profit, then you must follow certain disclosure guidelines 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 for information about “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Better Business Bureau)
The new laws affect several business categories, including:
- Any kind of advertising, e.g. Google AdWords or AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creators
- Blogging
- etc.
If your website does not display certain pages to visitors (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t allow you to list digital products, PayPal may suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend web applications, and you won’t be allowed into many advertising and online merchant networks.
If your online presence is not in compliance, you could also end up facing a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
In this guide, we discuss the importance of having a compliant website and provide simple solutions that will make your WordPress site legally compliant in minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With The Law?
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice on this website. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all laws in your country or region.
The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant
Consider what would happen to your business if any of the situations below were to occur:
- Someone suffers a heart attack after they use your online fitness workout.
- The skin care products you promote as an affiliate gives someone allergic reactions.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you have not informed them exactly what you will do with their personal details.
- Someone steals content from your site and publishes it on their website.
- You did not tell your visitors that you’re an affiliate for the product you are marketing and will receive financial benefits if they end up purchasing via your affiliate link.
- You didn’t spell out the terms of your return policies.
- Your visitors claim your testimonials are all fake and try to sue you as a result.
- You didn’t disclose in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
- Your website publishes adult information and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged children.
Consider now these documented case studies of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up personal information (including credit card info to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, they’ve also been ordered to issue a copy of the judgement to everyone he does business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
- A social networking app developer received a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private information about children.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping UIDs. Many marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% had infringed at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in violation of 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 with warnings or lose access 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 exposed to litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA (Cost Per Action) or PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Product Promoter
- AdWords User
- Info Product Publisher
- Amazon Associate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Adult Content Publisher
- Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
- Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online
it’s important to make sure that your website complies with all laws governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Compliance With Third-Party Services
Complying with 3rd-party services terms and policies is important.
You are obligated to let your site visitors know that your website complies with all necessary legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only improves trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also a requirement of many companies you do business with online.
Here are just some examples:
Google requires websites to display legal information if using many of their services. This includes Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Monetizing your site using Google AdSense ads …
(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)
And even promoting your services or products using Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell products online via companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will need to add various legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …
(ClickBank – policy requirements)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to display clear disclaimers and statements on your site, especially if you plan to sell products with the aid of product testimonials or endorsements …
(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant
FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many business are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As documented on their website, 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 plan to 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 interests by making sure that your website complies with FTC regulations.
There are many business resources that can provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references to some of these at the end of this article …
(Wording your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of the law)
Don’t Forget Social Media Apps
If you plan to develop apps that integrate with your website, social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others require you to provide access to various legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are unsure whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote anything on your site using affiliate marketing, or make money online with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or use Google AdWords pay-per-click ads to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to include on your site to comply with their 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, almost all third-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)
What Compliance Pages Should You Add To Your Website To Be Compliant?
If your website or blog lacks in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
Adding the following compliance pages to your site will help keep your business out of trouble with many regulatory authorities and external providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “takedown” notices):
- About Us Page
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms Of Use
- Website Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above pages, you may want to look into implementing any of the following pages where applicable:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you promote or sell affiliate products or services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Health Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides health or medical content)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Media Terms (if you allow users to download videos or audio files on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
It’s important to add correct disclosures to your site. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs users that you will not receive any form of payment for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Lets your visitors be aware that you will be compensated if they purchase through your affiliate links.
- Review/Sample Copy – Lets visitors know that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product.
- Sponsored Post – Lets your visitors be aware that you were compensated in some form 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 online publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add 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 this has been done, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Upload Legal Web Pages Manually
If someone prepares and delivers the legal content for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend creating a legal directory in your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory (e.g. using FTP) …
(Upload legal pages to your server via FTP)
You can then add a link to your legal pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu feature …
(WordPress Menu)
Displaying Legal Web Pages On Your Website
Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and clearly visible to your visitors. You can insert these into your sidebar (or place them in the footer of your website) to ensure that users will be able to access the information from all your pages …
(It’s important to display legal information to visitors on all of your website’s pages)
If you need help displaying links to pages on your sidebar and footer in WordPress using widgets, see this tutorial:
Use Ready-Made Legal Templates
You can easily find attorney-drafted downloadable website forms and agreements just by searching online, or by going to websites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms – Attorney-prepared legal forms)
More info:
Alternatively, you can download a set of cut & paste legal templates written by attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website templates were written by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with search and replace to insert your own details, then pasted into your legal web pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Form Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance
- Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
- Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page on your website 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 these to your web server as described previously.
For more details, go here:
WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages
In addition to using legal templates, you can keep things very simple by using a plugin.
Here are some WordPress plugins you should check out:
WP Legal Pages Plugin
(WordPress Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to bother with creating legal web pages manually, then consider choosing a plugin like 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 help 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:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page 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 just a few clicks of the mouse.
- Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Editable Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any page on your website.
- Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your pages when published.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other page on your site.
- Forced Options – Force page lock down. Page unlocks when users agree to your terms.
- New Features – More features get added to this plugin with every new version.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature will appear inside your WP dashboard menu …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you view, create and edit legal pages from your admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings Screen)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, niche websites, e-commerce sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Create different legal page types)
You can also select from several built-in legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages – 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 plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your online business …
Go here to learn more:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)
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 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 powered 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 the plugin on all of your websites.
Go here for more information:
If hiring a lawyer to create your online 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 to hire the services of a legal form or lawyer.
We want your business to be protected!
Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (for FREE!), or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal content, or a legal pages plugin as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator quickly generates essential legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you make money online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site complies with regulatory agencies and the terms of service and guidelines provided by 3rd-party sites that you may be promoting or endorsing online. Your internet presence must comply with a wide range of regulations, some 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?
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice on this website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.
Resources
Below is a time-saving list of additional sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your site may require to remain compliant and meet legal requirements and guidelines:
- FTC 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
Also …
- 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
We hope this article has helped you understand the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your website or blog using simple legal resources and solutions.
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