Hosting for Spas
The non-medical version of this business, where the constraints are booking and seasonality rather than claims.
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Web Hosting for Med Spas
A med spa is two businesses sharing one front door. Half of it sells the way a retail brand sells, with offers and packages and photographs that make somebody book. The other half is a medical practice with a supervising physician and rules about what may be claimed. Web hosting for med spas has to hold both halves up at once, and that is the whole difficulty.
Selling like retail, advertising like a practice
Look at what a med spa website is asked to do. Fill a schedule. Move memberships and package deals. Make a nervous first-time client feel that the place is clean and competent. That is retail work, and it wants confident, warm, specific copy.
Now look at what sits behind the treatment. A supervising physician, prescription products, devices that states regulate, and a body of advertising rules about what a clinic may promise. That side wants hedged, careful, checkable language.
Most med spa websites are written entirely by the first half of the business. The copy goes up because it sounds good and it converts, and nobody with medical responsibility reads it until there is a complaint. The fix is dull and it works: one person owns publishing, and anything that touches a treatment gets seen by the medical director before it goes live.
The sentences worth a second look
- Anything that names an outcome as a certainty rather than a possibility.
- Anything with a number in it, whether that is a percentage, a duration or a count of sessions.
- Anything comparing your treatment to somebody else's, or to surgery.
- Anything that reads as a diagnosis or a treatment recommendation to the person reading it.
- Testimonials, which are somebody else's claim republished under your name.
None of this is legal advice, and the rules differ by state and by product. Have your own attorney and your medical director look at the wording. What we can tell you is where the wording usually goes wrong.
A treatment page your medical director can sign
We set med spa sites up so the careful version is the easy one to publish, with one clear owner and pages your medical director can read before they go live. If your current setup already does that, we will tell you.
Before and after photographs
This is the single most valuable content on a med spa website and the most common way one gets into trouble. People book because of the gallery. They do not book because of the mission statement.
Two things go wrong, and they go wrong together. The photograph goes up without written permission from the person in it, and it goes up without any indication that results are not the same for everybody.
Consent is a document, not a conversation
Somebody nodding in the treatment room is not consent to publish. What you want on file is written permission that says specifically where the images may appear, whether the face may be shown, and how the person withdraws permission later. When a client asks you to take a photograph down, and eventually somebody will, you want to be able to do it that day.
That is a website chore as much as a paperwork chore. If the gallery is hard-coded and only your designer can touch it, a removal request becomes an email that waits a fortnight. If you can edit it yourself, it takes two minutes.
Results vary, and the page has to say so
A gallery with no context invites the reader to treat the best result as the expected result. Say plainly, near the images rather than buried in a footer, that outcomes differ by person and that individual results are not guaranteed. Sitting the note next to the photographs is the point. A disclosure nobody sees does very little for you.
Practical file handling
- Shoot the pair under the same light and the same angle. Uneven lighting reads as a doctored image whether or not it is one.
- Strip location data from the files before uploading. Phone photographs routinely carry the coordinates of your treatment room.
- Do not use the client's name in the file name. Photographs of an identifiable patient are not the place to be casual.
- Resize before uploading. A gallery of untouched phone images is the usual reason a med spa homepage crawls on a phone.
- Keep the originals somewhere other than the website, and make sure the site itself is covered by website backups you have actually tested.
Naming the treatments you offer
Clients search by brand. They type the name of the injectable or the device, and if your website does not contain that word you are invisible to them. So you have to name things. The question is how.
Prescription products come with advertising conditions attached, both from the manufacturer whose trademark you are using and from the regulators who oversee how a prescription treatment may be promoted. There are also uses that a manufacturer has never applied for approval on, which practitioners may still discuss with a patient but which a website should be far more careful about.
The pattern that keeps sites out of trouble is to describe rather than promise. Name the treatment, say what it is for, say who it is not suitable for, and say that suitability is settled at a consultation. That last clause does more work than anything else on the page, because it puts the medical decision back in the room with a clinician.
Wording that tends to survive review
- "Commonly used to soften lines across the forehead" rather than "erases forehead lines".
- "Most clients see a change within a week or two, though this varies" rather than a fixed number of days.
- "Whether this is right for you is decided at your consultation" on every treatment page, not just the first one.
- Your own words rather than the manufacturer's marketing copy pasted in, which is both a claims problem and a duplicate content problem.
Check the specifics with your medical director and your own adviser before publishing. Rules vary by state, by product and by who holds the licence, and a page that is fine for one clinic can be a problem for another.
What gift cards and memberships ask of web hosting for med spas
The retail half of the business wants to sell online. Gift cards in December, package deals, a monthly membership that bills automatically. Each of those moves money and personal detail onto your website, which changes what the site is.
A brochure site with a contact form is a low-risk object. A site with a shopping basket, saved customer accounts and a recurring billing plugin is a different thing, and it wants more attention. Not a bigger hosting plan in most cases, but more attention.
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Keep the card details off your own server
Use a payment provider that handles the card on their own systems and hands your site a token back. You want to be able to say truthfully that no card number ever touched your website. That is easier to arrange than it sounds, and it removes the worst of the risk in one decision.
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Put the certificate on every page
Not just the checkout. A mixed site where the basket is secure and the treatment pages are not looks broken to a browser and untrustworthy to a client. An SSL certificate covering the whole site is standard now and there is no reason to do it by halves.
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Treat every login as a door
Client accounts, staff accounts, the booking system's admin. Each is a way into records you do not want out. Two-factor authentication on the administrative accounts, and a real look at website security once you are taking payments, is proportionate rather than paranoid.
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Know where the client data lives
Most med spas run booking and records in a separate practice system, and the website only links to it. That is a good arrangement. Keep it that way and resist the temptation to have the website collect anything clinical. A web form that asks about medications or conditions has just changed what your website is holding.
One thing worth saying about the health side. Hosting sold as suitable for regulated health data is a real category, and it is bought by practices whose website itself stores patient information. A med spa marketing site that books through an outside system and takes payment through a payment provider is usually not that. Ask your own compliance adviser rather than buying the expensive plan reflexively, and ask them the specific question of what, if anything, your website actually stores.
Pull a before and after photo the same day
We rebuild the gallery so your staff can add, resize and remove images without waiting on a designer, and we will say plainly if the plan you already pay for covers it. Call 716-771-2536.
Who should not be reading this page
A day spa. If you offer facials, massage, waxing, body treatments and nothing that requires a physician, none of the above applies to you and following it will only make your website more timid than it needs to be.
You can write about outcomes freely. You can post photographs with ordinary permission and no medical disclosure. You do not need a medical director signing off on a page about hot stones. Read hosting for spas instead. That page is about booking, gift cards and seasonal traffic, which are your real problems. This page is about medical advertising rules, which are not.
The line between the two is not what the treatment feels like, it is who has to be involved for it to be legal. Injectables, prescription-strength peels, lasers that a state restricts to medical supervision: that is a med spa. Everything else is a spa, and the simpler set of rules is a genuine advantage you should use.
And on hosting specifically
Most med spa websites need less than they are sold. A dozen or so pages, a gallery, and a link out to whatever runs your booking. Shared hosting covers that comfortably, and the entry tier is often the honest answer.
- You do not need a large plan because your photographs are large. You need smaller photographs.
- You do not need enterprise security for a site with no logins and no basket. If you add a basket, revisit it.
- You do not need managed hosting to run a site nobody logs into more than once a month.
- You may well need somebody to rebuild the gallery so you can edit it yourself. That is a one-off job, not a monthly fee.
Where paying more is defensible: you are selling gift cards and memberships directly, you run several locations from one site, or your site carries the booking rather than linking to it. Those change the shape of the problem. Number of clients does not.
How AldoMedia helps
AldoMedia has built and looked after websites for Western New York businesses since 1999. Med spa sites are familiar work, usually arriving with a gallery nobody can edit and a treatment page written before anyone with a licence read it. We are an independent authorised reseller rather than the operator of the underlying platform, and we will tell you when the plan you are already paying for is the right one.
We are not your lawyer and not your compliance adviser, and we will not pretend otherwise. What we can do is set the site up so the careful version is easy to publish and easy to correct. If you are moving from an old site, the order of operations that keeps your email working through the change is on the website migration page. Call 716-771-2536 or tell us what your site runs on.
Common questions
Med spa website questions
Can I post before and after photographs without written consent?
Do not. Verbal agreement in the treatment room is not the same as documented permission to publish, and a photograph of an identifiable client is exactly the kind of image people ask to have removed later. Get written permission that names where the images may appear and how it can be withdrawn, and set the gallery up so you can pull an image the same day somebody asks. Your own adviser should draft the form.
Am I allowed to name the injectable brands I use on my site?
Clients search by brand name, so in practice you have to. The care is in what you say next to it. Manufacturers have conditions on the use of their trademarks, and prescription treatments carry advertising rules about what may be claimed and about uses that were never approved. Describe what a treatment is commonly used for, say that suitability is decided at a consultation, and check the wording with your medical director.
Where does the "results vary" note need to go?
Next to the photographs, not in the footer. The purpose is to stop a reader treating your best result as the expected one, and a disclosure they scroll past does not do that. Keep it short and plain. Something to the effect that outcomes differ from person to person and are not guaranteed, sitting directly under the gallery, reads as honesty rather than as small print.
Do I need HIPAA-compliant hosting for a med spa website?
It depends entirely on what your website stores, which is a question for your own compliance adviser rather than for a hosting company. Many med spa sites store nothing clinical at all, because booking and records live in a separate practice system and the site only links to it. That arrangement is worth protecting. A web form that starts asking about medications or conditions changes the answer, so decide the form before you decide the plan.
Selling gift cards online, does that mean a bigger hosting plan?
Usually not a bigger plan, but it does mean more attention. Use a payment provider that keeps card numbers on their own systems, put a certificate across the whole site rather than only the checkout, and put two-factor authentication on every administrative login. The change is in what the site is holding and who can get into it, not in how much server it needs.
My med spa shares a building with a day spa. Which set of rules applies?
Both, page by page. Anything requiring a physician, an injectable, a prescription-strength product or a restricted device carries the medical advertising constraints. Facials, massage and waxing do not, and writing them as though they did makes the page weaker for no benefit. If the day spa side is the bigger part of your business, hosting for spas is the more useful page for you.
Related
Website Security
What changes the day your site starts taking payments and holding client logins.
Read about website securityWebsite Backups
Why a gallery you cannot restore is a gallery you cannot afford to lose.
How backups should workEvery trade we cover is listed on hosting by industry.
Hero image: TheExG, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped.
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