Legal requirements for websites are meant to keep everyone’s online experience safe, transparent, and productive.
This article is for informational purposes only. It does not constitute legal advice. Reach out to a qualified legal professional for guidance specific to your needs.
Web design regulations aren’t arbitrary ‘best practices’ you can pick and choose from. There are many data privacy laws in place across the globe, and nearly as many governing bodies that enforce them. Additionally, a compliant, accessible website feels professional, which builds visitor trust more readily.
In this article, we’ll discuss what a website’s legal requirements look like, and how to comply with them when you’re building and maintaining your site.
What makes a website ‘legal’?
A website’s ‘legality’ depends on the type of site, its audience, and the location it's published from. Not every website has to comply with the same regulations. A health clinic’s patient portal has to meet different legal standards from a B2B SaaS company’s brand website, for instance. But there are several overlapping acts and laws that everyone who publishes a website in the United States should know (more on these later).
Federal, state, and industry-specific website regulations create consumer protections for everyone within their jurisdiction. You’ll need to identify all relevant privacy and data protection laws for your industry, as well as any requirements that differ between your and your users' locations.
For example, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) gives California residents the right to request that their data be deleted, an additional right beyond those enforced by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) across the U.S. Any website visitors you get from California have that right, even if you publish your site from Florida, which has looser privacy laws.
If your users are based in the European Union, make sure your site follows the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) standards, as these privacy laws protect all consumers within the EU. And if you collect any private health information (PHI) from users in the U.S., make sure your site follows the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) closely.
7 essential compliance standards for websites
The basic legal requirements for an enterprise website can be found across several overlapping acts and laws. Staying compliant with them helps you limit the risk of legal trouble and protect users’ privacy, so it’s well worth your effort and attention.
Here are seven basic, foundational rules for websites, but keep in mind that it may be necessary to add more to your site as new laws are passed in your industry and around the world.
1. A privacy policy
2. A cookie policy
3. Data security
4. Terms of service (ToS)
5. Accessibility requirements
6. Copyright and intellectual property
7. Accurate copy and disclaimers
1. A privacy policy
If your website collects any data from website visitors, you must publish a privacy policy somewhere on your website that details how and why you collect that data under multiple state and federal laws worldwide. Your privacy policy has to outline the type(s) of data you collect, what you intend to do with it, and the rights users have to modify or delete the data you’ve collected.
In the U.S., for example, the California Online Privacy Act (CalOPPA) requires websites that collect personal information from California residents to conspicuously share a privacy policy. The Australian Privacy Act of 1988 and the United Kingdom’s Data Protection Act 1988 (DPA) also require public privacy policies as part of consumer data protection efforts.
There are several boilerplate privacy policy templates available online, but make sure you pick one that’s been recently updated to capture all the necessary details.
2. A cookie policy
Several data privacy regulations, such as the GDPR and CCPA, require you to inform users before collecting behavioral data. Today, that often appears as a cookie policy banner, with a link to a separate cookie policy page that provides more information about users’ rights. Before you set up any analytics tools or ad spaces that collect data about user behavior, make sure you’ve implemented a solution for requesting consent.
3. Data security
You have to adequately secure any data you do collect, so consumers have reasonable confidence that it won’t fall into the wrong hands. ISO 27001 and SOC 2 are the current security standards for protecting databases from unauthorized access. They aren’t legally binding, but these standards outline everything from what type of personal information you can store to how long you can keep it in your database. And displaying that your site is compliant with ISO 27001 and SOC 2 rules is a trust signal that makes users feel better about sharing their data.
Business website
Learn how to design, build, and publish a unique and professional website for your business in no time.
4. Terms of service (ToS)
While they aren’t legally required, a terms of service (ToS) agreement is a piece of compliance information you’ll see on many websites that handle user data. It outlines your business’s rules of conduct regarding consumer protections, and it can protect you from liability. This is especially important if you’re building a service or e-commerce website that requires gathering financial information, even if you route users through a third-party service like Google Pay or PayPal.
5. Accessibility requirements
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) publishes a set of accessibility requirements called the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). It covers a wide range of web design topics like color contrast, heuristics, and accessible font choices.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) made compliance with the WCAG mandatory for government sites in 2024. While that specific rule may not apply to your site, it’s still in your best interest to follow their lead. The WCAG includes several guidelines that result in a more engaging, intuitive user experience, like dismissable hover content and a visual contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 between text and images.
6. Copyright and intellectual property
You must license and attribute any copyrighted assets you use in your web design, such as music or images. Artists rely on royalties to keep creating the digital art and soundtracks we all enjoy, and attributions help your users understand where it comes from. And if you’re using their work, they deserve to be paid and attributed accordingly.
Using an asset marketplace site like Creative Commons, or hiring someone from a freelance site like Fiverr or Upwork, can help you find assets you need. Creative Commons also helps users buy a license and generate properly formatted attributions.
If you don’t have the budget to purchase a license, Creative Commons also includes open access files, which you can use for free, but you’ll still need to include attribution details on your website.
7. Accurate copy and disclaimers
All your website copy must accurately describe your products and services. Be careful with words like ‘all’ or ‘never’ or superlatives like ‘best,’ because there are probably exceptions that make them untrue. If there are limiting factors, such as state availability or time windows, add a disclaimer. If you don’t, the lack of information could hurt how visitors feel about your brand and, in a worst-case scenario, they could sue you for false advertising.
Best practices for maintaining website compliance
Launching a compliant website makes it easier to stay legally aligned over time. Here are a few best practices you can use to maintain your website as the regulatory landscape evolves.
Prioritize accessibility
Always add alt text to images, select legible fonts, and keep interactions predictable when creating new pages or adding content to existing ones. Make accessibility part of your overall design system, so any inconsistencies are obvious and easily corrected.
Review security
Proactively managing your site’s security is a great way to build trust with users while staying in line with legal standards. Conduct regular security checks to ensure you’re safeguarding users’ data in accordance with national and local laws. You can build a regular security review into your content management cadence, where you apply security patches and conduct scans every 3–6 months.
Disclose data collection
Whenever a user is about to take an action that changes how or why their data is collected, let them know. That could be on the landing page, where you present your cookie policy, or the account creation stage, where you present the terms of service.
Add legal standards to style guides
Add all your written content standards to your design system and style guide, so everyone knows which words they should and should not use on the site. Just reminding your content creation team to use ‘most’ instead of ‘all’ can save your organization a lot of hassle later.
Enforce peer review
Add a peer review step to your site’s content governance workflow. It often takes a fresh pair of eyes to notice a missing disclaimer or web accessibility standard that isn’t properly followed. Create a checklist for peer reviewers to use when signing off on each other’s work, so more than one person is accountable for ensuring your site stays compliant in the long term.
Build internationalization and/or localization
If your site operates in several countries, especially ones with different privacy laws, you need internationalization (i18n) and localization (i10n).
Localization is the process of translating written content on your site or adapting it to regional markets. Internationalization is about building the infrastructure you need to adapt content, layouts, and user journeys to regional differences, like copyright protections and data privacy regulations.
Between the two, internationalization is more critical for legal compliance. Localization is still important for personalizing your content and marketing efforts to a user’s context (e.g., giving culturally relevant examples and using local currency for cost descriptions). Together, they create an engaging, relevant web experience for users worldwide.
Build compliant, scalable websites with Webflow
The legal requirements for websites today are stricter than ever before, thanks to growing interest in creating online consumer protections. Regulations in GDPR, HIPAA, and CCPA are carving out a more secure, consumer-first future for online businesses. It’s in your best interest to stay on top of these standards, but there’s a lot of work and infrastructure that goes into it.
Webflow is a secure website management platform that takes over most of the backend infrastructure you need to build a law-abiding site. Websites built with Webflow are automatically SOC 2 and ISO 27001-compliant, and the flexible Webflow CMS and its integrations make it easy to consistently apply content and accessibility requirements to every new page you add.
Keep your website compliant as you scale with Webflow.
Build websites that get results.
Build visually, publish instantly, and scale safely and quickly. All with Webflow's agentic web marketing platform.
