One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to break the law.
Internet laws were designed to protect consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes products and services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements won’t excuse someone from taking legal action against you.
New laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for profit, you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the (US based) Better Business Bureau (BBB). Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – Better Business Bureau)
These laws has ramifications for several business categories, including:
- Any kind of advertising, e.g. inline advertising, Google Adsense, etc.
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not approve digital products for sale, PayPal may suspend your account, Facebook will suspend web applications, and you won’t be allowed to enroll in a number of advertising or online merchant networks.
More importantly, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
The purpose of this guide is to make you aware that your website(s) may be subject to legal requirements according to laws that govern online business practices, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of other providers whose products or services you may be endorsing on your site, and that there are solutions that can help your sites become fully compliant, such as the plugins discussed further below.
Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. As previously stated, this article is designed only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with federal, regional or local laws governing business practices online and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of companies whose products or services you advertise on your website or blog
Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important
Is your business at risk? Consider what the implications to your business would be if any of the following scenarios were to occur:
- Someone has a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online fitness workout.
- The skin cream you sell as an affiliate marketer gives a number of users skin rashes.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you have not defined what you plan to do with it.
- Someone steals your content and puts it up on their own website.
- There is no statement on your site letting visitors know that you’re an affiliate for the product you’re selling and could earn an affiliate commission if they purchase it.
- You haven’t spelled out the terms of your return policies.
- Someone claims that the testimonials on your site are all fake and decides to sue you as a result.
- You have not disclosed that you received a free copy in a product review.
- Your site includes adult information and you did not take sufficient measures to keep underage children from accessing it.
Consider too the real case studies of costly compliance breaches listed below:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up their personal information to complete his offer. 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 private information about children.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape Users IDs. Many 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 randomly-picked websites, more than 90% were in violation of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had breached at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had infringed 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 with warnings or lose access 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 risk becoming targeted for litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Product Marketer
- AdSense Publisher
- Niche Publisher
- Amazon Associate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
It’s imperative to ensure that your website complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Complying With Third-Party Services Terms And Policies
Compliance with 3rd-party companies terms and policies is important.
You must let your visitors know that your business complies will all laws and recommended guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also a requirement of most companies you will do business with online.
For example:
Google requires websites to display certain information when using their products or service. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Monetizing your WordPress blogs using Google AdSense advertising …
(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)
And even promoting your products via Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell information products via companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will need to add various legal pages to your site before your products can be approved for selling via their networks …
(ClickBank – policy requirements for vendors)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to include clear disclaimers and policies on your website, especially if you plan to use product testimonials or endorsements …
(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Comply
FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many sites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been the case, this will most likely prompt 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 plan to do any type of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business interests by ensuring that your site complies with all FTC regulations and guidelines.
There are many business resources that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. See the references and useful resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(Wording your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Social Media Apps - Don’t Forget These
If you plan to develop social networking applications that will integrate with your site, sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others require you to provide information about various legal pages …
(Apps that interface with social networking sites also require compliance)
- If you are not sure whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote services or products on your site as an affiliate marketer, or generating revenue with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay advertising, or use Google AdWords 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 all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts suspended.
- If you have been wondering 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 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies)
What Legal Pages Do I Need To Add To My Site To Be Compliant?
If your website is falling short in aspects of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your website should help keep you out of trouble with many regulatory agencies and 3rd-party providers, and avoid potential legal issues):
- About Us Page
- Contact Page
- Privacy Statement
- Terms Of Use
- Website Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above, you may want to consider including any of these compliance pages:
- Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Linking Policy
- Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides general advice about health or medical areas)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Audio/Video Terms Of Use (if you provide users with access to media on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding the correct type of disclosure to your site is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Lets your visitors be aware that you will not receive for writing the content.
- 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 an affiliate link.
- Review/Sample Copy – Lets users know that you have received a review or sample copy of the product.
- Sponsored Post – Lets your visitors be aware that you have been compensated in some form to write the article.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets 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 display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Pages Content To Your WordPress Site
Ideally, you should have a lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this prepared, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Uploading Legal Web Pages Manually
If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you in standard web page format (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend adding a legal directory to your server and uploading your legal pages to this directory (e.g. via FTP) …
(Upload legal pages to your web server via FTP)
You can then easily add links to these legal pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu administration …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and display clearly to your visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into your sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your site) so that visitors can access the information from all your pages …
(Display links to your legal pages to users on all of your website’s pages)
If you need help displaying links to pages on your sidebar menu using widgets, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
Ready-Made Legal Templates
You can find attorney-drafted downloadable forms and agreements just by searching online, or by visiting websites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms)
For more details, go here:
Another option is to purchase a set of cut & paste legal templates designed by legal attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages)
These legal pages were created by an attorney and 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 legal web pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Page Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance
- Privacy Policy: Google & DoubleClick DART, etc.
- Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page on your website for every legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your web server as previously described.
Go here for more details:
Legal Pages – Plugins
In addition to using cut & paste templates, another option for adding legal pages to your site is to use plugins.
Here are some great plugins for WordPress users that you should check out:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin
(WP Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to spend time creating legal web pages manually, then consider choosing WP Legal Pages …
This plugin is not free, but it’s a low-priced and well-supported plugin that will make the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site a lot easier and save you many headaches.
Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of 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 – Includes fully customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like every other WP page.
- Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your WordPress pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your pages 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 website.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks when users agree to your legal terms.
- Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with every new version.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item is added to your main dashboard section …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)
This allows you to create, edit and view your legal pages from your admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Screen)
With WPLegal Pages, you can easily create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, affiliate sites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Create different legal pages)
Choose from several built-in legal templates …
(WP 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
To learn more this WordPress plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar – WP Website Compliance Plugin
The Compliance Bar Plugin For WordPress is a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your online business …
Go here to learn more:
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 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 have packaged high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers into a plugin that can be installed quickly on any WordPress site. Your legal pages can be 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 sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
More info:
If hiring legal experts to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, consider implementing some basic type of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional assistance.
We want your business to be legally protected!
Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (for FREE!), or consider using one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal page templates, or a legal pages plugin - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator allows you to quickly generate necessary 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 are planning to), it’s important that your website complies with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service provided by third-party products and services that you may decide to promote or use online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
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 cannot offer legal advice in this article. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with the law concerning your specific business.
Legal Information
Here is a useful list of sites we suggest you visit to better understand what may be required of your website to remain compliant and meet legal obligations:
- FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- FTC 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
- US Patent and Trademark Office
- United States 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
Hopefully, 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 and inexpensive legal resources and solutions.
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