Is your WordPress website legally compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking the law, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose services or products you are endorsing or using?
As the digital economy continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and rules keep changing, it’s important that you stay on top of what’s going on and ensure that your site remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your web presence is important in the success of your business strategy.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you promote anything on your site for material gain, then you need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the 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.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The introduction of these new laws affect various online business categories, including:
- Any form of advertising, e.g. inline advertising, Google Adsense, etc.
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creation
- Bloggers
- etc.
If your site does not display certain legal 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 will not let you list digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account, Facebook could disapprove your web applications, and you will not be allowed to enrol in most advertising and online merchant networks.
If your digital presence is not compliant, you could face a number 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 explain inexpensive methods to make your WordPress site legally compliant.
Is Your Website Breaking The Law?
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice. As stated previously, 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 that govern online business practices and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of providers whose services or products you endorse
Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant
Is your business at risk? Consider what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:
- A person has a cardiac arrest after they use your online fitness workout.
- The skin cream you promote as an affiliate marketer gives someone who purchases from your link skin rashes.
- You’ve informed subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not spelled out exactly what you will do with their details.
- Someone steals content from your website and puts it up on their website.
- There is no statement on your website letting your site visitors know that you are marketing a product as an affiliate and will earn a financial benefit if they purchase it.
- You haven’t spelled out the terms of your return policies.
- Online visitors claim that your testimonials are misleading and decide to sue you as a result.
- You didn’t disclose in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
- Your website publishes adult content and you have not taken appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged children.
Consider now these actual 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 an offer they were promoting. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer received a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private details.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes Users IDs. Many internet marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independent 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% 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 notices or lose access 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 being targeted for litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Promoter
- AdSense Publisher
- Niche Marketer
- Amazon Associate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
You need to make sure that your website or blog is fully compliant with the law.
Complying With 3rd-Party Services Terms And Policies
Leading online companies and government agencies that regulate trade emphasize the need of complying with the terms and policies of 3rd-party service providers.
You must let your site users know that your business complies with all necessary legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and buyer confidence in your website, it’s also a requirement of many companies you interact with online.
Here are just some examples:
Google requires your site to display legal information when using many of their services. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Generating revenue with your websites using Google AdSense display advertising …
(Google AdSense policy requirements)
And even promoting your products or services via Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you plan to sell information-based products via places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you are required to add certain legal pages to your site before your products are approved for selling via their networks …
(Policy requirements product vendors selling via ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you display clear disclaimers and policies on your website, especially when using testimonials or product endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Site Is Compliant
New FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many websites are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As is already the case, this often prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you do any type of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. you should protect your business by making sure that your site is compliant with FTC regulations and guidelines.
Various resources online provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to useful resources to some of these at the end of this article …
(It’s important to word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Social Media Apps Also Have Compliance Requirements
If you are planning to create social networking applications for your site users, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others with access to your legal pages …
(Social networking 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 companies like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote products or services online as an affiliate marketer, or making money online with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or using 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 display on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts suspended.
- If you’ve 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, most third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use)
Essential Legal Pages To Add To Your Site To Ensure Compliance
If your website is falling short in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your website will help keep you out of trouble with many consumer protection authorities and 3rd-party providers, and even help you avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Page
- Privacy Statement
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to consider implementing any of these compliance pages:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you provide information about affiliate products or services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Linking Policy
- Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides information about health or medical areas)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Use Of Media (if you allow users to download videos or audio files on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
Adding the right type of disclosure is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – This lets visitors know that you are not receiving compensation for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Disclosure that informs users that you may derive some form of financial or similar type of benefit if they act on your recommendation and buy through one of your affiliate links.
- Review/Sample Copy – Informs visitors that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product or service you’re reviewing or writing about by the author or product developer.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs users that you have been compensated in some way to write the content.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs visitors that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to satisfy the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring website publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
Adding Legal Content To Your WordPress Website
Ideally, you will consult your lawyer or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once these have been completed, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Uploading Legal Web Pages Manually To Your Website
If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you in typical web page formatting (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend creating a legals folder in your web server and uploading your legal pages to this folder (e.g. via FTP) …
(Upload legal pages to your web server using 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 kept up-to-date and clearly visible to all site visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into your sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your site) to ensure that visitors can access the information from every page …
(Display links to your legal information to users on all of your website’s pages)
We have written a detailed tutorial about displaying links to pages on your WP sidebar or footer using widgets here:
Ready-Made Legal Templates
You can easily find downloadable attorney-prepared website forms and agreements just by searching online, or by visiting sites like the ones shown below:
Find Legal Forms
To learn more, go here:
Alternatively, you can download a set of website legal templates designed by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website legal pages 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 details, then pasted into your legal pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Pages include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects new Federal Trade Commission regulations that came into effect in 2012)
- Privacy Policy
- ToS & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page for every legal form you want to add to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload the pages to your web server as described earlier.
Go here to learn more:
WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages
As well as using templates, another option for adding legal pages to your website is to use plugins.
Here are some WordPress plugins you may be interested in using:
WP Legal Pages Plugin
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)
If the idea of manually creating legal pages for your website feels too time-consuming for you, then consider choosing WordPress Legal Pages …
This plugin is not free, but it’s an affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you a great deal of time.
Some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages are:
- Built-in Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – 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 fully customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Editable Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any WP page.
- Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your website or blog 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 other page on your site.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. Page unlocks when the user agrees to your terms.
- Additional Features – More features are being added to this plugin with every new version.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will appear in your main navigation section …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you create, edit and view legal pages from your admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings)
With WP Legal Pages, you have the option of easily creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, niche sites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Create different legal page types)
Select from a number of pre-written legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages – 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 the plugin website to learn more this plugin:
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress sites with over twenty customizable compliance page templates for your online presence …
More info:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin 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 Service
- 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 very flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
More info:
If hiring lawyers to create your online legal documentation is currently out of your budget, then consider at least implementing some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional assistance from a legal expert.
We want your business to be protected!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal templates, or a legal pages plugin as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator quickly generates basic legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you do business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines of 3rd-party services and products that you may be promoting or advertising online. Your internet presence must comply with a whole set of regulations, many of which you may not 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, please note that we are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice in this article. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements in your country or region.
Additional Legal Information
Below is a useful list of sites we recommend you visit to better understand what your business requires to stay compliant and meet its 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
- 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
- US Patent and Trademark Office
- United States Copyright Office
Additionally …
- Analytics Help – Policy requirements for Google Analytics Advertising Features
- Google AdSense Program Policies Explained
- 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 compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your site using simple and cost-effective legal resources and solutions.
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