A pharmaceutical company website has at least three audiences. The public, looking for information about a product. Professionals — doctors, pharmacists and distributors. And the authorities that oversee healthcare communication. Designing it like any other corporate website invites costly mistakes, some of them hard to undo. These are the elements it cannot do without.
1. Compliant communication, page by page
In healthcare, every published sentence is regulated communication.
- Food supplements: nutrition and health claims must be limited to those authorised under Regulation (EC) 1924/2006 and listed in Regulation (EU) 432/2012. The website copy must match the notified label.
- Over-the-counter medicines: advertising to the public requires approval from the national authority — in Italy, the Ministry of Health. Prescription-only medicines cannot be advertised to the public: their information belongs in an area reserved for healthcare professionals.
- Medical devices: their advertising is regulated too and often requires prior approval.
In practice, set up an approval workflow: nothing goes live without sign-off from the regulatory team. A good website makes that step easy rather than working around it.
2. Product pages that match the packaging
The most common mistake is publishing information that differs from what is printed on the pack: an outdated size, an ingredient updated only on the carton, directions for use rewritten in different words.
The fix is to manage product data from a single source: name, size, ingredients, directions, warnings and codes. When the packaging changes, the online product page changes with it. Where relevant, the page can offer the patient leaflet or technical data sheet as a PDF.
3. A dedicated area for healthcare professionals
Doctors and pharmacists need different material from the public: technical data sheets, studies, visual aids and medical information resources. A restricted-access area allows this to be published within the rules and becomes a working tool for medical representatives as well.
4. Accessibility
The European Accessibility Act (Directive (EU) 2019/882, transposed in Italy by Legislative Decree 82/2022) has applied since 28 June 2025. For businesses selling online, accessibility requirements are mandatory, with WCAG 2.1 level AA as the reference standard.
Even where it is not compulsory, accessibility is a mark of quality. In healthcare many users are older or visually impaired. Legible text, adequate contrast, keyboard navigation and described images are the bare minimum.
5. Multilingual done properly
For exporting companies, a multilingual website is not an automatic translation of the Italian pages. Each market has its own rules: a claim permitted in Italy may not be permitted in the United Kingdom after Brexit. You need separate URLs for each language, professionally reviewed translations and a correct hreflang set-up, so that Google shows every user the right version.
6. Speed, security and privacy
The site must load quickly on smartphones, serve a single secure HTTPS version and handle cookies in line with the GDPR. Take care with contact forms: do not collect people's health data without a genuine need and a clear legal basis.
7. Being found by Google and AI assistants
More and more people look up product information by asking ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity. Pages whose text is already in the code sent to the browser, Schema.org structured data for the company and its products, clear FAQs and an llms.txt file all help Google and AI assistants read and cite the site accurately.
In short
A pharmaceutical company website must be compliant, consistent with the packaging, accessible and technically sound. These are the same principles we have applied to cartons and labels for more than forty years. To see how they could apply to your website, explore our web design for companies or read how we approach pharmaceutical packaging.
This article is for information only and does not replace review by your company's regulatory team.
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