Website compliance; it’s not just about GDPR

GDPR has been on website owners minds for a few years now. Most have a cookie compliance banner and published policies to adhere to the new EU laws. A decade ago the focus was around W3C regulations ensuring websites were accessible to people with various hearing, movement, sight, and cognitive abilities. So apart from having your Terms & Conditions, Privacy Policies and the like, there are few things many aren’t aware of, that websites may legally ‘fail’ on, and they’re very easy things to fix.

Company information

Since 2008, UK legislation requires all registered UK companies to have the following published on their websites:

  • The full company name (as it appears on Companies House)
  • The registered office address
  • The company’s registered number

In the grand scheme of building and launching, or re-launching a website these small details are easy to miss. Nevertheless, they are important so companies can be properly identified and inspected in terms of their limited liability status, by all who wish to have dealings with them. By having the bare minimum: the registered company name, can allow users to access to information held on Companies House.

What the data told us

More than two thirds of companies did not publish their company number

Out of the 873,000 websites we matched to companies on Companies House, 672,000 failed to publish their company number on their website (or it was buried too deep to find). That’s more than two thirds of UK companies analysed. Not only this, but more than a third did not include their registered company name. Over a half do not clearly state their office’s registered post code. This makes it very difficult for audiences to validate these companies and is a widespread breach of UK legislation.

 

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