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Launching a website involves countless phases, especially for businesses and organizations in compliance-heavy sectors such as healthcare and finance. Stringent requirements must be met, or you risk frustrating your users, damaging your reputation and exposing your business to costly legal risks.Â
However, meeting these standards goes beyond checking a compliance box, and with compliance requirements constantly updating, your website and applications must remain adaptable without requiring massive overhauls to accommodate the changes.Â
Designers face a never-ending dilemma — the more compliant a platform becomes, its usability suffers. Imagine a healthcare app that perfectly meets all the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) standards but is so complicated to use that patients abandon it in favor of paper forms.Â
This shows how compliance alone is not enough. If users experience friction when interacting with your platform, they may disengage. As many as 71% of users abandon branded apps after three months.
Businesses across all industries benefit from having an easily accessible website. But balancing regulatory rigor with intuitive design is essential. Here’s how you can master both.
A simplified and enhanced interface is critical to a user-friendly platform. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) have set clear benchmarks that industries must follow to ensure websites and apps are non-discriminatory.Â
Inaccessible websites lead to legal actions. A 2023 report by the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) shows that 82% of the top 500 e-commerce companies faced legal action due to digital accessibility.Â
Make your platform accessible with the following best practices:
Additionally, multilingual support should be considered to cater to diverse audiences. This ensures compliance and usability are inclusive, not restrictive.
Forms are critical touchpoints in regulated industries for things like collecting medical consent or onboarding new financial clients. It’s essential that these forms are simultaneously user-friendly and highly secure.
Sensitive healthcare sectors may depend on users filling out forms with their medical information to dispense necessary supplies. For example, in the U.S., cannabis revenue has increased by 64%Â and counting as medical cannabis use continues to grow. As the industry expands, more users may turn to online dispensaries to receive their products, which might include needing to fill out a form outlining their specific needs and uploading proof of their medical card. The role of clear and efficient forms becomes even more important to ensure compliance alongside smooth operations.
However, overly complex forms can deter users and create unnecessary barriers. To improve the user experience, clarifying instructions at every step is essential. Avoid using sophisticated industry jargon, which can confuse users— instead, prioritize clear and simplified language.Â
This is particularly important when explaining consent to authorize access to personal information. Additionally, reducing the number of steps during onboarding can further minimize friction and support a more seamless process.
Users expect familiar experiences that feel trustworthy, especially in high-stakes industries. This is why most healthcare apps, for instance, stick to tried-and-true user experience (UX) patterns — because they work. Implement the following to ensure familiarity and trust:
Testing is critical to the success of your platform. Simulating real-world scenarios before launch helps catch usability issues and compliance failures before users access the platform. One effective strategy is to employ focus groups to uncover pain points and highlight areas where the interface could be improved.
In addition, conducting scenario-based testing helps ensure the website adheres to relevant industry regulations. To establish a benchmark for best practices, examine how similar businesses and organizations address friction points and identify areas for improvement.
Healthcare regulations like HIPAA or IEC 62304 differ significantly from financial standards such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS). A one-size-fits-all approach to compliance testing simply won’t work.
Regulations can shift rapidly, so your platform must be agile enough to adapt to new compliance standards without requiring a costly full redesign. Adopting a modular development approach enables components to be flexible and updated independently.
Implementing a centralized consent management system also makes accommodating changes related to GDPR, HIPAA, and other regulatory frameworks easier. This ensures you won’t have to scramble to update siloed systems or browse scattered information, as everything is kept in one place. Additionally, scheduling ongoing audits and periodic compliance reviews helps identify regulatory changes early. Keeping up with revisions allows you to maintain continuous adherence to industry regulations.
Gathering user feedback lets you quickly detect confusing elements or emerging compliance risks. Acting on this feedback also shows users that you listen and value their input.
Incorporating immediate feedback prompts during onboarding can help you gauge how smooth the process feels for users and highlight areas they believe could be improved. Post-interaction surveys after key touchpoints can also help identify friction points once a client has engaged with your website or app.
Beyond direct feedback, analytics-driven insights can also reveal important patterns in user behavior. These insights highlight where users commonly make errors or abandon processes, helping you pinpoint potential friction points. Companies that apply feedback-driven strategies can retain up to 30% more customers.
Trust cannot be discounted in regulated industries. At 53%, over half of the people worry about their online privacy. To ensure client confidence, you must protect their sensitive information, health data, financial records, or personal identifiers. Prioritize the following data security measures:
Additionally, design platforms that make it simple for users to manage, delete, or update their data — a must under GDPR and CCPA guidelines.
Organizations in the most regulated industries face a challenging but achievable obstacle. Meeting regulatory standards should not come at the expense of usability. Rather, accessibility should be at the forefront of your customer’s interaction with your platform. Planning with user experience in mind strengthens user trust and ensures you’re meeting regulatory expectations without sacrificing usability.
As regulatory frameworks evolve, so must your design mindset: prioritize users, plan for change, and view compliance as a catalyst for delivering even better digital experiences.
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