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Is your website legal?

 

Many a company has inadvertently broken the law on their website and ended up facing legal proceedings from aggrieved consumers or vigilant regulatory watchdogs. As well as steep legal bills, the damage to corporate reputation is considerable. Compliance risk on the web is a growing issue and companies take the management of this risk very seriously. One of our clients recently asked us to help with a large and complex compliance audit across more than 30 of its websites.

The brief

• One of our clients, a major consumer healthcare group, acquired a range of brands from a competitor. These brands all had consumer-based websites, catering to markets across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
• All of the new sites – over 30 in total – had to comply with the online standards set by the healthcare group. These standards related to the following:
  • Privacy and data protection.
  • Regulatory environment – many of the sites dealt with Over The Counter products, which are subject to strict legal guidelines that vary between countries.
  • Web standards, including accessibility, usability and functionality.

The exectution

• We ensured that we had a profound knowledge of the standards to which the sites had to adhere. In order to establish this knowledge, we worked closely with our client’s compliance and marketing teams. We also worked with the technical teams responsible for the sites.
• We laid out a detailed process by which all of the new sites would be checked and signed off. We communicated this process to all parties involved with the compliance checks.
• Where necessary, we worked with our client to produce standardised materials, such as privacy policies and legal notices. These materials were translated to each of the languages used on the sites.
• We reviewed each of the sites, analysing all text and images against preset criteria. These criteria ensured that:
  • All mentions of the previous parent company were altered to the new name.
  • All images had appropriate alt-tags and captions.
  • All links operated properly.
  • All content was tidy and presentable and up to our client’s expectations.
  • Privacy policies and legal notices conformed to our client’s standards.
  • All site content was easily accessible to all potential users. This included users with disabilities.
• We checked all site communications to users, including newsletters and email confirmations. Where mailing lists were employed, we ensured that the option to unsubscribe was given to users.
• We listed all required corrections in a clear, concise format and sent them to the appropriate teams. Where possible, we provided the teams with the appropriate replacement content.

The result

• Once the changes had been made, we rechecked the sites against a comprehensive scorecard to ensure that they met the standards of our client.
• When satisfied that a site met all of the scorecard requirements, we organised for the appropriate compliance bodies to sign it off.
• So far, we have analysed and signed off 20 sites, ensuring they all conform to the same strict standards.
• These sites are now live online, representing the public face of our client.