A health website carries obligations an ordinary business site does not. It is read by people who may be anxious, in pain, using a screen reader or on an old phone. It frequently touches information about a person's health, which changes what you are allowed to record and who you are allowed to share it with. And what it says about outcomes is a claim, subject to advertising law. None of that makes health web design exotic, but it does mean an agency without the relevant habits will build you something that looks fine and creates problems later. This page sets out what the work actually involves and how to check a candidate.
Accessibility is a requirement, not a refinement
Health information is used disproportionately by people with disabilities, and accessibility is a legal expectation rather than a nice extra. The Department of Justice publishes guidance on web accessibility explaining that the Americans with Disabilities Act's requirements apply to the websites of covered entities and pointing to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines as the standard commonly used to meet them. In practice this means text that a screen reader can follow in a sensible order, meaningful alternative text on images, sufficient colour contrast, forms whose fields are properly labelled and whose errors are announced, and full keyboard operation with a visible focus indicator. Video needs captions. Ask a candidate agency how they test: an automated scanner catches a minority of issues, so the useful answer includes keyboard-only testing and a screen reader. Ask to see the accessibility notes from a recent build. Agencies that treat this as real work will have them, and agencies that bolt on an overlay widget at the end will not.
Privacy, tracking and what your site quietly transmits
The most common serious defect in a health site is invisible: third party advertising and analytics tags on pages that reveal something about an individual's health. A symptom page, a condition-specific appointment form or a patient portal can transmit an identifier alongside information about a person's care, and the federal privacy rule sets out precisely what a valid authorisation for disclosing protected health information must contain. A cookie banner is not an authorisation. The practical rules for a build are clear: keep advertising tags off authenticated areas and off pages whose URLs disclose a condition, never pass names, emails, phone numbers or appointment details into third party tools, keep form submissions inside systems appropriate for health data, and document which tag runs on which page. Ask any agency for that page by page tag map. If they have never produced one, they have not done this kind of work before.
What you may claim, and who signs it off
Copy on a health site is advertising, and health claims carry a higher evidentiary standard than ordinary ones. The Federal Trade Commission's health products compliance guidance sets out that objective claims about health benefits must be supported by competent and reliable scientific evidence at the time they are made, and that qualifying information has to be clear rather than buried in small print. That constrains a lot of what agencies write by instinct: implied guarantees, superlatives about outcomes, testimonials describing results a typical patient would not get. Build the approval process into the project plan rather than discovering it at launch. Name the clinician who reviews claims, give them the copy in a form they can comment on, and budget time for review rounds. Projects in this sector overrun on approvals far more often than on design.
Performance, structure and the things patients actually need
Beyond the constraints, a health site succeeds on ordinary craft. Most visitors arrive on a phone, often in a hurry, so speed matters: Google publishes the Core Web Vitals metrics that describe loading, responsiveness and visual stability, and they are a reasonable target to write into a contract. Structure the site around what people came for rather than around your org chart: conditions and treatments, who the clinicians are and what they are qualified in, where you are and how to get there, what it costs and which insurers you accept, and how to book. Put contact and booking within reach on every page. Ask candidates to show you a health site they built, then open it on your own phone, navigate it with the keyboard alone, and try to find the price of something. Five minutes of that tells you more than the portfolio page does.
Questions people ask about health website design
Does my health website legally need to be accessible?
For most covered entities the practical answer is yes. Department of Justice guidance explains that the Americans with Disabilities Act's requirements extend to the web presence of covered entities, and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are the standard usually used to demonstrate compliance. Treat it as a build requirement rather than a later fix.
Can we run advertising pixels on the site at all?
On general marketing pages that reveal nothing about an individual, usually yes. On authenticated areas, condition-specific pages and booking flows, the safe answer is no without proper authorisation. Ask your agency for a page by page tag map and have someone accountable approve it.
Who should write the clinical content?
A professional writer can draft it, but a qualified clinician has to review and approve anything that makes a claim about outcomes, treatments or risk. Put named reviewers and review time into the project schedule, because approvals are the usual cause of delay in health builds.
Do accessibility overlay widgets solve the problem?
No. They can mask issues without fixing the underlying markup, and they are widely criticised by the people who actually use assistive technology. The durable approach is semantic HTML, labelled forms, proper contrast and keyboard operation, tested with a screen reader rather than only with a scanner.