Australia regulates health advertising more tightly than the US or UK, and the practice website is advertising. Section 133 of the National Law and Ahpra's advertising guidelines apply to every dentist, physio, chiropractor, GP and cosmetic clinic, and the most common breach we see is sitting on the home page of otherwise excellent practices: a testimonial. This is the brief our Australian team uses when we build a practice website.
What the National Law forbids on your website
- Testimonials about clinical care. Ahpra prohibits using testimonials in advertising a regulated health service. That includes a "What our patients say" page, embedded Google reviews that mention treatment, and re-posting a patient's kind words. You may link to a third-party review platform you do not control, and you may show reviews about non-clinical matters (parking, the reception team) with care — but the safe rule is no testimonials on the site.
- Misleading or unreasonable claims. "Pain-free", "guaranteed", "best", and anything that creates an unreasonable expectation of benefit.
- Offering gifts or discounts without stating the terms and conditions. A "free consultation" or "$99 check-up" needs its conditions on the same page.
- Encouraging indiscriminate or unnecessary use of health services — countdown timers and "book now before spots run out" language on clinical treatments.
- Titles you do not hold. "Specialist", "cosmetic surgeon" and similar are protected; use them only if registered as such.
Cosmetic and injectables clinics also sit under the TGA: therapeutic goods, including brand names of prescription-only injectables, cannot be advertised to the public, and Ahpra's 2023 cosmetic advertising guidelines went further on before-and-after images and influencer content.
Privacy: health data is sensitive information
Under the Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles, health information is "sensitive information" with a higher consent standard. Your website needs a privacy policy that says what you collect through forms and booking, why, where it is stored, and how a patient accesses or corrects it. Booking and contact forms that collect health details should go to a system with Australian-hosted or contractually equivalent storage, not a generic form plugin emailing a Gmail inbox. State-based schemes (for example Victoria's Health Records Act and NSW's HRIP Act) add obligations for private providers.
The pages that book patients
Phone as a tap-to-call button and "Book online" above the fold on mobile — Australians book online at a higher rate than UK patients, and practice systems (Dental4Windows, Praktika, Cliniko, HotDoc, HealthEngine) all offer embeddable schedulers. Then one page per treatment — implants, Invisalign, wisdom teeth, hygiene, emergency — with the item numbers and fee ranges where you are comfortable publishing them, health-fund information (which funds you are a preferred provider for, HICAPS on the spot), and a booking button. Multi-location groups need a page per clinic with its own address, hours and team, linked from that clinic's Google Business Profile.
Accessibility and technical basics
The Disability Discrimination Act 1992 applies to websites, WCAG 2.1 AA is the standard, and the same failures cause complaints as elsewhere: missing alt text, unlabelled forms, poor contrast. Under 2.5 seconds to load on a mid-range phone, Dentist / MedicalClinic schema, HTTPS, and a sitemap. Our free website audit shows in a minute which of these your current site fails, and our Australian website cost guide gives honest price bands in dollars.
"In Australia the question is not 'what makes the site persuasive' but 'what can the site say'. Build inside the rules first; the persuasion is in the clarity."
Practice sites are a fixed-scope build with us, compliance items included, delivered in Sydney and Melbourne hours. Price it with the cost calculator or ask for a free demo of your practice site first.