5 ways to keep your new health coach website legal

So you’re launching a new health coach website (or maybe you already did!) and you’re super excited about the message and design, but most of all the vibe of your website. Kudos to you for getting it out into the world!

While I’ve shared a blog post before about the 7 ways to improve your health coach website, what I haven’t shared are all the legal things you need to include on your website if you’re in the health and wellness industry.

I know, I know, legal things aren’t as fun as the pretty images and colours on your website, but they’re just as important (if not more!) for ensuring that your website is protected and ready to stick around for the long-haul.

Read on to learn the 5 ways to keep your new health coaching website legal:

P.S. This post was written in collaboration with Jaime Bell and her team at Contracts Market*, and may include some affiliate links which will be marked with an asterisk*. I may receive a commission if you purchase any products from them.

I've personally used Contracts Market for multiple contract templates over the past 2 years for my Canadian based business, and feel secure knowing that I've protected my income as well as my time.

#1: You’ve Gotta Include the Disclaimers

If you’re operating in the health and wellness space, you likely have lots of tips, resources, and information that will help people to live their healthiest lives. While your website is there to let your future clients know what you do, you also know that everything doesn’t work for everyone and it’s important to work with you in order for your client to truly benefit from your services.

I know you’ve probably heard about disclaimers before, but what the actual heck are they?!

In basic terms, a disclaimer is a legal statement that can be found on websites, in legal contracts, or as a stand-alone document where one person tells the other person that they are not going to be legally responsible for something that might happen as a result of the other person using or implementing what they offer.

In the health and wellness industry, a disclaimer can protect you from instances like a client coming back on you because they didn’t lose the 20 pounds your website said they could in 12 weeks with your coaching (even though they never showed up for the coaching sessions and didn’t follow the program like you intended it to be followed 🙄).

The health and wellness space can be tricky because these results bring out people’s vulnerabilities, which is why having clear disclaimers on your health coach website is essential.

It’s important to clearly set out in your disclaimers on your website that your content is for educational and informational purposes only, for liability sake. A great place to include these is in the footer.

Disclaimers could also include that the information you’re providing on your website doesn’t replace the recommendations from their physician and is NOT medical advice, as you are not a licensed medical doctor, and that they should reach out to them before changing their health routines.

These disclaimers are aimed at ensuring that users (the general public!) to your website are aware of any potential risks of implementing your tips, resources, and coaching. It also limits your own liability for anything they implement.

Your service contracts are where you should go into more detail about these disclaimers, once a client-provider (coach) relationship is formed. It’s also a good idea to put a similar disclaimer on all of your resources too, such as your free downloads, how-to guides, blog posts, and video trainings, so they are reminded of this at the time they are downloaded or viewed.

Have you ever gone to a website and skipped right over the pop-ups, raced through the “verify you’re a human” tests, and clicked “agree” without ever reading through the website’s privacy policy and terms of use?

We’re all guilty of it! When we go to a website, we have one thing in mind that we want to accomplish there, and in our instant gratification world, we want to accomplish it as fast as we can.

BUT, those privacy policies are there for a reason, and if you’re a health coach with your OWN website, you better believe you need a strong privacy policy too!

It’s a legal requirement to have a privacy policy on your site to let the general public and users to your site know what data you’re collecting, why you’re collecting it, how it’s protected, and how it can be deleted if requested by them.

The types of data and personal information you may be collecting include names, phone numbers, email addresses, etc. It’s a good rule of thumb to collect as little data as possible in order to provide your services through your site to users. For example, if a user is downloading a freebie, do you REALLY need their last name and phone number? No! A first name and email is all you need there.

It’s also important to note that the laws of the jurisdiction from where your USER is based governs their use of your site. Therefore, it’s important to know where most of your traffic is coming from.

In Canada, the safest bet is to comply with the European Union General Data Protection requirements and those of the California Consumer Privacy Act, as they have set the highest standards for consumer privacy protection.

It’s important as the owner of your website to know how to comply if you get a request for personal information to be deleted. That’s why it’s such a great idea to use a trusted website platform like Squarespace that makes it easy to do this.

Since your website and data collection is unique, you need a privacy policy that is tailored specifically to your website, not a copy/paste of someone else’s.

If you’re looking for a great template for your website terms of use and privacy policy, check out The Contracts Market’s templates* (they rock!). You can use my promo code X to save X!

Interesting… a health coach talking about cookies? Healthy ones, of course!

In all seriousness, you really DO need to have a cookie policy on your website.

This is a separate pop-up policy from your website terms of use and privacy policy. However, it can be included as part of your privacy policy. A cookie policy tells users that you are using cookies to collect information in the back-end of your website. Thankfully, Squarespace makes this easy to implement, which is just another reason why I love them so much!

A cookie policy is included in the Website Terms of Use and Privacy Policy Bundle* from Contracts Market.

#4: Give Users a Place to ACTIVELY Consent to Accepting Your Privacy Policy

You need to have a place on your website where users ACTIVELY consent to the acceptance of your privacy policy. No tricky business here! You need to be able to show that your privacy policy was clearly presented to your users when they landed on your site so it’s clear to them that you’re collecting their personal information. You’ve probably seen a million pop-ups for this, because that’s a great way to “hit them in the face” with your privacy policy so they can’t miss it.

It’s also a good idea to also have a place at checkout where users can accept your terms of use and privacy policy at checkout. That way they know to double check any terms that would govern a purchase from your site or the use of any content, resources, or products you might have on there.

#5: Spell Out The Rules

Just like anything, when you have a health coach website, you need to spell out the rules and let your users know how they can use all the information on their site. This protects you and all of the hard work, time, and energy that you’ve put into creating incredible content, resources, freebies, blog posts, etc.

Having a clause on your website that spells out that users can use the information and resources, but can’t repurpose, share, or sell it, etc, is really important to protect your intellectual property. This section of your website tells users how they CAN and CAN’T use these resources, which also ties back into the disclaimers you include with these resources.

I’ve had my content stolen before and it doesn’t feel good.

Thankfully all I needed was to send a few emails clearly outlining which content was stolen, and the other business owner agreed to change it. However, if you have to get lawyers involved, they’re going to need to see you have these rules in place or you don’t have a legal leg to stand on.

If you’re an affiliate for a company and you share about and link to certain products, supplements, programs, etc, you MUST disclose that you are affiliated with the company and the product or service.

You’ll notice that’s exactly what I did at the top of this article, and identify all affiliate links with an asterisk*.

To learn more about the affiliate and influencer marketing guidelines and to ensure that your services and content complies with them, check out these resources:

As an affiliate, you need to disclose your connection with the company in clear language that is prominent and easy to find. Tell your audience explicitly that you are either receiving a commission, free product, or both.

Be honest about your experience with the product or service. If you don’t love a product or haven’t used it in years (or ever), don’t share about it as an affiliate. Only share the products and services you truly use and love!

I hope these 5 legal things for your health coach website help you stay protected as you launch your fabulous space online. Remember that it’s not just about protecting yourself.

Disclaimers, policies, and contracts also set out boundaries for you to have a healthy relationship with your website visitors, subscribers, and clients. Do you want to be seen as the only person in the whole world with answers to solve their problems? Hells no! That’s a ton of responsibility.

You want to be seen as an equal partner in their health improvement plan, and these “annoying” legal are a big part of that.

They also signal to the world that your business is legit, which is never a bad thing.

Here are some of my favourite contracts for Health Coaches from The Contracts Market, some of which I’ve personally used in my business and highly recommend: