Most businesses meet consumer protection law through a template privacy policy somebody pasted in during a build, and nobody has read since.
The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 changed enough about how UK consumer rules are enforced that this is worth revisiting, particularly for anything you sell or advertise through a website.
What follows is a practical DMCC Act website compliance checklist covering the areas most likely to affect an ordinary business site. It is not legal advice, and the sections below explain where you genuinely need some.
DMCC Act Website Compliance Checklist for Businesses
Start here: this is not a website problem
The temptation is to treat compliance as something a web developer fixes. Most of it is not.
Whether your pricing practice is lawful, whether your review handling meets the standard, whether your subscription terms are fair, these are questions about how the business operates. The website is where the answers become visible and enforceable.
So read the current official guidance and take advice on your specific circumstances. The government’s collection on the DMCC Act is the authoritative starting point, and the CMA publishes guidance on how it approaches enforcement.
Pricing: show the real total
The area affecting the most ordinary websites.
The direction of travel is towards showing consumers the price they will actually pay, upfront, rather than revealing mandatory charges progressively through a checkout.
Practically: if a fee is unavoidable, it belongs in the headline price rather than appearing at step four. Optional extras are different from compulsory charges, and the distinction matters.
Check your own journey by completing a purchase as a customer would and noting where the number changes. If it moves after the first price is shown, that is where to look.
Reviews: know where yours come from
Rules in this area address fake and misleading reviews, including a business’s responsibility for reviews it publishes or commissions.
The practical questions are straightforward. Where do your reviews come from? Can you demonstrate they are from genuine customers? Do you incentivise them, and if so, is that disclosed? Do you publish selectively, showing positive reviews and suppressing others?
If you use a third-party review platform, understand what verification it performs, because relying on somebody else’s process does not necessarily transfer the responsibility.
Never write your own, never commission them, and never ask staff or family to. Beyond the legal exposure, it is the kind of thing that surfaces eventually.
Subscriptions: make leaving as easy as joining
If you sell anything regularly, this section matters most.
The general principle is clearer information before somebody commits, reminders before renewal, and a cancellation route that is not deliberately harder than the sign-up route.
If somebody can subscribe in three clicks online and can only cancel by telephoning during office hours, that asymmetry is the pattern the rules address.
Check your own flow. Time how long it takes to subscribe and how long to cancel. The comparison is usually revealing.
What to actually do
- Complete your own purchase journey as a customer, noting every point where price changes or information appears late.
- Audit your reviews: source, verification, incentivisation, and whether publication is selective.
- Time your cancellation route against your sign-up route if you sell subscriptions.
- Read the current official guidance, since specifics change and secondary summaries date quickly.
- Take advice on your circumstances from a qualified adviser. Sector, business model and customer type all affect what applies.
- Write down what you checked and when. If a question ever arises, a dated record of having reviewed this is considerably better than nothing.
Where this connects to everything else
Compliance overlaps with things worth doing regardless.
Clear upfront pricing reduces enquiries from people who were never going to buy, and increases confidence among those who were. Honest reviews with visible replies persuade better than a curated wall of five stars. An easy cancellation route reduces the resentment that produces bad reviews.
Accessibility belongs in the same conversation, since a checkout somebody cannot complete has failed both commercially and, potentially, in other ways. Work towards WCAG 2.1 Level AA.
And where performance and environmental impact both apply, treat them as the same lever: reducing unnecessary data transfer and processing supports a faster experience while lowering estimated digital carbon, though environmental figures remain modelled rather than directly measured.
Our sustainable web design work covers the website side of these journeys. The legal position on your specific business is a question for your adviser.