Nov 30, 2025·8 min
How to Build a Compliant Website for Regulated Industries
Learn how to plan, build, and maintain a compliant website for regulated industries with practical steps for security, privacy, accessibility, and approvals.
Learn how to plan, build, and maintain a compliant website for regulated industries with practical steps for security, privacy, accessibility, and approvals.
A “regulated website” isn’t a special type of site—it’s a normal website operating under extra rules because of what your company does, what you publish, and what data you collect. Start by defining what “regulated” means for your organization: healthcare providers and vendors (patient data), financial services (investor/customer protections), insurance (marketing and disclosures), pharma/medical devices (promotional claims), or any business handling sensitive personal data at scale.
Make a simple list of the regulators, laws, and standards that could touch your site. Typical categories include:
If you’re in healthcare, include HIPAA-related obligations for any patient-related interaction. For financial services, consider regulator expectations around disclosures and archiving. For pharma or healthcare product marketing, factor in FDA-related guidance on promotional content.
Compliance requirements change dramatically depending on scope. Confirm whether the site is:
Name accountable stakeholders up front: Compliance, Legal, Security/IT, Marketing, and Product. This avoids gaps like “Who approves homepage claims?” or “Who owns cookie settings?” and sets you up for a smoother workflow in later steps.
Before wireframes or copy, decide what your website is allowed to do. In regulated industries, “nice-to-have” features can quietly turn into higher compliance obligations, extra reviews, and longer launch cycles.
Start by listing user types and the journeys you want to support:
For each journey, write the desired outcome (e.g., “request a demo,” “find a clinic location,” “download a datasheet”). This becomes your scope boundary: anything not tied to a real journey is optional—and often risk.
Some common components trigger higher scrutiny because they collect data, make claims, or influence decisions:
Decide early whether you truly need these features—and if yes, define the “minimum safe version” (fewer fields, softer language, clearer disclaimers).
Define what marketing can and cannot say, who approves regulated statements, and where disclosures must appear. Create a simple “claims matrix” (claim type → evidence required → required disclaimer → approver).
If you serve multiple regions, scope the locales now. Different locations can require different privacy notices, consent flows, retention rules, or accessibility expectations. Even a single extra language can change review and update processes.
Getting scope and risk clear upfront keeps design focused and prevents last-minute rework when compliance reviews begin.
A regulated industry website is not “just marketing.” Every claim, statistic, testimonial, and product description can create compliance risk if it’s inaccurate, outdated, or missing required context. Content governance gives you a repeatable way to publish quickly without guessing.
Start with a simple written policy that spells out what counts as a “regulated statement” (e.g., clinical outcomes, performance claims, risk/return language, pricing, guarantees, patient stories).
Define:
Use an approval workflow that creates an audit-ready trail:
If you use a CMS, confirm it can export revision logs or integrate with your ticketing system.
If you’re building a custom web experience (beyond a CMS), choose tooling that supports controlled changes. For example, platforms like Koder.ai (a vibe-coding platform for React web apps, Go backends, and PostgreSQL) include features like planning mode plus snapshots and rollback—useful when you need to iterate quickly while still keeping a tight change history and an easy escape hatch when a review finds an issue.
Create reusable templates for disclaimers and disclosures so they’re consistent across pages. Set rules for where they appear, minimum font size, and when to use footnotes or citations (especially for statistics and comparative claims).
Many organizations must retain past web content. Decide:
This turns your website compliance checklist into a repeatable publishing system rather than a last-minute scramble.
Privacy-friendly design starts with one practical question: what is the minimum information this website must collect to do its job? Every extra field, tracker, or integration increases compliance effort and breach impact.
Review each capture point—contact forms, newsletter signups, demo requests, account creation—and remove anything that isn’t required.
If a demo request only needs a name and work email, don’t ask for phone number, job title, revenue range, or “how did you hear about us?” by default. If you want optional fields, clearly label them as optional and avoid “pre-checked” choices.
Also think about data you collect indirectly. For example, do you need precise geolocation, full IP addresses, or session replay? If not, don’t enable them.
Regulated websites should treat core legal pages as part of the design system, not last-minute footer links. Typically you’ll need:
Design these pages for readability, versioning, and easy updates—because they will change.
Consent isn’t one-size-fits-all. Your cookie banner and preference center should match your jurisdictions and data uses (e.g., opt-in for certain regions, opt-out elsewhere). Make it as easy to reject non-essential tracking as it is to accept it.
Create a simple “data map” for the site: what data is collected, where it goes (CRM, email platform, analytics), retention expectations, and who internally can access it. This documentation saves time during audits, vendor reviews, and incident response.
Security for regulated industry websites works best when it’s designed into the structure of the site, not added right before launch. Start by separating public pages from anything that handles accounts, data entry, or back-office administration. This makes it easier to apply stronger controls where they matter most—and to demonstrate those controls during audits.
Use HTTPS everywhere (not just on login pages) and enforce HSTS so browsers automatically refuse insecure connections. Fix mixed-content issues (for example, scripts, fonts, or embedded media loading over HTTP) because they quietly weaken an otherwise secure setup.
If your site includes any portal—patient access, client dashboards, partner logins—implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) and strong password rules. Add account lockout or throttling to slow brute-force attacks.
Limit who can administer the site. Use role-based access (editor vs. publisher vs. admin), remove shared accounts, and restrict admin panels by IP/VPN where possible. Keep privileged actions (publishing, plugin installs, user creation) auditable.
Forms and APIs are common entry points for abuse. Apply server-side validation (never rely on browser validation alone), CSRF protection, and rate limits. Use CAPTCHA only where it’s needed to stop automated spam or credential stuffing—too much friction can harm legitimate users.
Plan encryption for sensitive data in transit and at rest, and avoid storing it unless it’s necessary. If the website doesn’t need to keep a data field, don’t collect it. Pair encryption with strict access controls so only approved admins and services can reach sensitive records.
Where your site runs is part of your compliance story. Regulators (and auditors) often care less about the name of the cloud provider and more about whether you can prove consistent controls: access, change management, logging, and recoverability.
A managed platform (managed cloud hosting, managed Kubernetes, or a reputable website platform with compliance options) can reduce operational risk because patching, baseline security, and uptime procedures are handled by specialists. Self-hosting can work, but only if you have the staff and processes to own updates, monitoring, incident response, and documentation.
When evaluating options, look for:
Separate environments help you prove that changes are tested before they touch real users (and real data). Keep a simple rule: no one “experiments” in production.
Practical controls include:
Decide upfront what you log (and what you never should). For regulated sites, focus on security-relevant events: logins, admin actions, permission changes, deployments, and unusual traffic patterns.
Define:
Backups only count if you test restores. Set targets such as RPO (how much data you can afford to lose) and RTO (how quickly you must be back online), then design to meet them.
Include:
Done well, hosting and recovery plans turn compliance from a promise into something you can demonstrate on request.
Accessibility isn’t a “nice to have” in regulated industries. It reduces legal risk, supports customers with disabilities, and tends to improve usability for everyone—especially on mobile, in low-bandwidth conditions, or for older users.
Retrofitting accessibility is slower and more expensive than designing it in. Start with fundamentals that commonly fail audits:
These are easiest to standardize as reusable components (buttons, form fields, alerts) so new pages inherit accessible behavior automatically.
PDFs and other downloads often break accessibility because they’re treated as “outside the website.” If you must provide PDFs (e.g., disclosures, product sheets), ensure they’re tagged properly, readable by screen readers, and navigable. When that’s hard to guarantee, publish an HTML alternative for the same information and keep both versions in sync.
Accessibility can regress when content changes. Add a lightweight audit step whenever you introduce new pages, new components, or major layout changes. Even a short checklist plus periodic spot checks can prevent repeated issues.
Avoid dark patterns: don’t hide “Reject” behind extra clicks, pre-check consent boxes, or use confusing language. Make choices clear, balanced, and easy to change later—this supports accessibility and strengthens trust in your compliance posture.
Analytics can help you improve your site, but in regulated industries it’s also a common source of accidental data exposure. Treat tracking as a controlled feature—not a default add-on.
Start with the question: “What decision will this metric drive?” If you can’t answer, don’t track it.
Use only the analytics you truly need, and configure them to avoid collecting sensitive data. Two high-risk patterns to eliminate:
/thank-you?name=… or /results?condition=…). URLs get copied into logs, referrers, and support tickets.Prefer aggregated, page-level metrics and coarse conversion events (e.g., “form submitted” rather than what was typed).
Most compliance issues happen when someone adds “just one script.” If you use a tag manager, restrict who can publish changes and require approvals.
Practical controls:
Add cookie/consent controls that reflect where you operate and what you collect. Make sure consent settings actually control firing (e.g., marketing tags should not load until allowed). Link your banner to your /privacy-policy and /cookie-policy.
Document every third-party script: vendor name, purpose, data collected, pages where it runs, and the business owner who approved it. This inventory makes audits faster and prevents “mystery tags” from lingering for years.
Third-party tools are often the fastest way to add functionality—forms, chat, scheduling, analytics, video, A/B testing—but they’re also a common way regulated websites accidentally leak data or create an unapproved “system” outside your controls.
Create and maintain a simple inventory of every external service your website relies on, including:
Be explicit about where the tool runs (server-side vs. in the visitor’s browser). Browser-based scripts can collect more than you expect.
For each vendor, confirm the terms match your obligations:
If you’re in healthcare or financial services, check whether the vendor will sign the agreements you need (for example, some analytics/chat vendors won’t).
Document where data is stored and processed (regions), whether it leaves your approved jurisdictions, and which subprocessors are involved. Don’t rely on marketing pages—use the vendor’s subprocessor list and security documentation.
Make “adding a script” a controlled change. Require an approval step before anyone:
A lightweight review—purpose, data collected, vendor terms, storage region, and risk rating—prevents compliance surprises and keeps your website’s behavior consistent over time.
Regulated industry websites aren’t “set and forget.” Every change—especially to claims, disclaimers, forms, and tracking—can create compliance risk. A lightweight but consistent audit trail makes it possible to prove what happened, who authorized it, and what visitors actually saw.
At minimum, capture four facts for every update: what changed, who approved it, when it shipped, and where it appeared (URL/page). This can live in your CMS history, ticketing system, or a dedicated change log—what matters is consistency and retrievability during reviews or audits.
For regulated updates, standardize release notes so nothing important gets missed. Your template should include:
Avoid approving changes “in production.” Use a staging environment with preview links so reviewers can see the full page context (mobile, desktop, and key browsers) before publishing. Add an approval gate for high-risk areas—product pages, pricing, testimonials, clinical/financial claims, and anything that collects personal data.
If your tooling supports it, require approvals in the same workflow that deploys the change, so you can’t ship without sign-off.
Even with approvals, mistakes happen. Write a simple incident response playbook for incorrect or non-compliant content going live:
A clear trail plus a clear rollback plan turns a stressful moment into a controlled process.
A compliant build can still fail at launch if the final checks are rushed. Treat pre-launch validation like a release gate: if a requirement isn’t met, it doesn’t ship.
Start with automated and manual reviews:
Forms are often where compliance breaks first.
Verify:
Confirm required pages are present, current, and easy to find from the footer and key flows:
Check core pages on mobile and slow connections, and test error handling:
If you need a final “go/no-go” template, add this checklist to your internal release notes and require sign-off from legal/compliance and security.
Launching a compliant site isn’t the finish line—it’s the start of a routine. Regulations, marketing needs, and vendor tools change over time, and your website should have a clear “keep it compliant” operating rhythm.
Create a simple schedule that your team can actually follow:
The goal is to reduce “surprise risk” from outdated dependencies, misconfigurations, or abandoned plugins.
Make audits predictable and lightweight instead of occasional fire drills:
If you’re frequently adding campaigns, add a quick pre-flight check for landing pages (forms, disclaimers, tracking, and accessibility basics).
Assign named owners for ongoing compliance—one person (or small group) who reviews:
When in doubt, create a “request and review” path so teams can move quickly without bypassing controls. If you need help setting up roles and review routines, route requests through /contact or centralize guidance in your /blog.
Start by listing what your site does and what data it touches:
Then map those to applicable laws/regulators/standards (privacy, advertising/claims, recordkeeping, security, accessibility). If your scope changes (e.g., you add a portal), re-run the mapping.
Define your scope boundaries before design:
Then label high-exposure features (forms with sensitive fields, eligibility checks, testimonials/claims, gated content) and decide on a “minimum safe version” (fewer fields, softer claims, clear disclaimers).
A claims matrix is a simple table that prevents risky marketing copy from slipping through.
Include:
Use it as the rulebook for new pages, landing pages, and updates.
Use a workflow that creates an audit-ready trail:
If your CMS can’t export revision logs, mirror approvals in your ticketing system so you can retrieve decisions later.
Apply data minimization at every capture point:
Also document where each data point goes (CRM, email platform, analytics), who can access it, and how long it’s retained.
Implement consent based on jurisdiction and actual data use:
Test with fresh browsers/devices to confirm behavior (not just in your tag manager preview).
Focus on controls that reduce common website attack paths:
Log security-relevant events (logins, admin actions, deployments) and restrict access to those logs.
Build an environment and recovery story you can prove:
Set RPO/RTO targets so backups and recovery are designed to meet business needs, not guesses.
Treat every external script/widget/plugin as a compliance dependency.
Maintain an inventory with:
Add an approval gate before installing plugins, adding tags/pixels, or embedding tools (chat, scheduling, video, maps).
Use a release gate with targeted checks:
After launch, keep a cadence (weekly updates, monthly patching, quarterly restore drills and security review) so compliance doesn’t decay over time.