Is your website legally compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any laws, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose products or services you are endorsing or offering?
As the cybersphere continues growing at such a fast pace and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s vital to try and stay informed about what’s happening and ensure that your site remains legal, especially if your online presence is a significant factor in your business strategy.
New laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for profit, you will need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the (US based) Better Business Bureau, also known as BBB. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
These laws affect several business activities, including:
- Any type of advertising, like Google AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creators
- Bloggers
- etc.
If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to list digital products, PayPal may suspend your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend web applications, and you will not be allowed to enroll in various advertising or online merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.
This article explains why it’s important to have a compliant website and how to quickly add legal pages to your site.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
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 consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all laws in your country or region.
Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant
Consider what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- Someone has a heart attack after using your online fitness workout.
- The skin cream you sell as an affiliate marketer gives people an adverse reaction.
- You’ve told subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you have not defined what you’ll do with the information you’ve collected.
- Someone copies content from your website and publishes it on their site.
- There is no statement on your website letting visitors know that you are promoting a product as an affiliate that you will get paid an affiliate commission if they decide to purchase using your affiliate link.
- You did not spell out the terms of your refund policies.
- A visitor claims that the testimonials on your site are all fake and decides to sue you as a result.
- You didn’t disclose that you have received a free copy of the product you reviewed.
- Your website contains adult-related content and you did not take sufficient measures to keep underaged children from accessing it.
Consider too the real examples of costly compliance breaches listed below:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up their personal information (including credit card information to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, he was also ordered to issue everyone they do business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
- A social networking app developer was slapped with a massive $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 does not allow users to scrape 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 broken 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 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 cautions or lose access entirely 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 a target of litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Promoter
- AdWords User
- Niche Publisher
- Amazon Associate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Adult Content Publisher
- Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
It’s vitally important 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.
Complying With Third-Party Companies
Compliance with 3rd-party companies terms and policies is important.
You are expected to let your site visitors know that your business complies with all necessary laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves trust and confidence in your business, it’s also a requirement of most companies you will interact with online.
Here are just some examples:
Google requires your site to display legal information when using their products or service. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Generating revenue online with your blog using Google AdSense ads …
(Google AdSense - policy requirements)
Or promoting your services or products through Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you sell products online using companies like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will be required to add certain legal pages before they will approve your products for sale in their network …
(ClickBank – policy requirements for vendors)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you include clear disclaimers and policies on your site, especially if you plan to use product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – 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 easily reveal that many websites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As documented on their website, this often prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute website owners in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you do any type of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by making sure that your site is compliant with all FTC regulations.
Various online business resources provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. See the resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(Structuring your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of the law)
Social Media Applications Also Require Compliance
If you plan to create apps that will integrate with your site, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others require you to provide information about various legal pages …
(Apps that integrate with social networking sites 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 websites like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting services or products online as an affiliate marketer, or monetizing your pages with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, 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 need to display on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
- If you have ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their policies)
What Compliance Pages Does Your Website Need To Be Safe From Legal Compliance Issues?
If your web site is lacking in aspects of compliance, then this section will help you.
Adding the following compliance pages to your site should help your website keep out of trouble with most regulatory authorities and third-party service providers, and avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Page
- Privacy Statement
- Terms And Conditions
- Website Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above pages, you may want to consider implementing one or more of these pages if applicable:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you sell or promote affiliate products and services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Linking Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides money-making information)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Media Terms Of Use (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
Adding correct web content disclosure information is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – This lets site users know that you will not receive compensation for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Lets your visitors know that you may benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and purchase through your affiliate links.
- Sample/Review Copy – Lets readers know that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product or service you’re reviewing.
- Sponsored Post – Discloses to users 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 satisfy the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring online publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Content To Your WordPress Website
Ideally, you will have a lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once this has been done, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Uploading Legal Pages Manually To Your Site
If someone prepares and delivers the legal content for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend creating a legals folder in your server and uploading your legal pages to this folder using FTP …
(Upload legal pages to your server via FTP)
You can then easily add a link to your pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …
(WordPress Menu)
Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and clearly visible to visitors. You can insert these into your sidebar (or place them in the footer of your website) so that visitors can access legal information from all your pages …
(Display links to legal pages on all of your site’s pages)
If you need help adding links to pages on your sidebar and footer in WordPress using widgets, see this step-by-step tutorial:
Using Ready-Made Legal Templates
You can easily find attorney-drafted downloadable website forms and agreements just by searching online, or visiting sites like the ones shown below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms – Legal forms)
Go here for more info:
Alternatively, you can download a set of website legal templates created by attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with simple search and replace to add your own details, then pasted into your pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Forms include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance
- Privacy Policy: Google & DoubleClick DART, etc.
- 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 server as described previously.
Go here for more information:
Plugins – Legal Pages
As well as using copy & paste legal templates, you can simplify things using WordPress plugins.
Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:
WP Legal Pages
(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)
If setting up legal pages manually feels too time-consuming for you, then consider installing WordPress Legal Pages …
This 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 site and save you many headaches.
Here are just some of the benefits of using WP Legal Pages:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the legal pages you need in a few minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
- Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Editable Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any WordPress page.
- Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when published.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other page on your website.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. Page unlocks and can be accessed only when user agrees to your terms.
- New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will display inside your main WP dashboard section …
(WP Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you create, view and edit legal pages from your admin area …
(WP Legal Pages – Settings Screen)
With WP Legal Pages, you can create legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites, niche sites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page Type)
Choose from various pre-configured legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – 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 site to learn more this useful plugin:
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
complete website compliance & disclaimer solution …
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)
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 Use
- 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 powered site. You can have legal pages installed and set up on your site in less than one minute and the license allows you to install and use the plugin on all of your websites.
Go here for more information:
If hiring legal experts to create your legal documentation is out of your budget, consider implementing some basic form of legal protection on your site until you can afford professional legal services.
We want your business to be legally safe!
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 page templates, or plugins as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates basic legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you make money online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your site remains compliant with regulatory agencies and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines provided by 3rd-party products and services that you may be promoting or selling online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumer rights, 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, we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements concerning your specific business.
Additional Legal Information
Below is a useful list of additional sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your site to stay 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
- 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
And …
- 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
Hopefully, this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your site.
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