20 May THE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF AN ONLINE PHARMACY WEBSITE

In the European Union (EU), it is possible to buy and sell medicines online, through pharmacy websites. It is absolutely important that patients only buy medicines from online retailers registered with the respective national competent authorities in the EU Member States, in order to reduce the risk of buying falsified or poor-quality medicines. As a consequence, pharmacy websites must include some specific elements to comply with the law and to create trust and brand awareness for the users.

The importance of being a trusted and recognised online pharmacy

When clients buy medicines from unauthorised websites, they are exposed to the risk of purchasing medicines that contain ingredients of low quality or in low level doses falsified medicines, which may be ineffective or even harmful. To make sure the online pharmacy is registered with the national authority, it is important to include specific elements on the pharmacy website in the EU. We have compiled a simple check list of the things that should not miss on a pharmacy website.

Online pharmacy logo

The European Commission has introduced a common logo that appears on the websites of the online pharmacies registered with their national regulatory authority in order to guarantee the reliability of a website and show customers that the pharmacy website has all the legal requirements to operate. The online pharmacy should display a logo in the footer which says ‘click here to verify that the website is legal’: it is clickable and redirects to the official register of online pharmacy in the country where the retailer is established and registered (e.g. http://www.salute.gov.it for Italy), which must match the flag displayed on the logo. You can see an example of the logo in the footer on Docfarma site: https://docfarma.it/

Support by an operator

When clients are in doubt, they need to find immediate support or the risk is that they will abandon the cart and having somebody to talk with it is very important when dealing with the purchase of medicines. Some pharmacies offer phone or message support, which enables users to interact directly with an operator, such as the support offered by Docfarma https://docfarma.it/

Simple and clean design

When talking about pharmacy and health, it is also important to enable clients find the right information about the medicines, that is the product image, description and instructions, side effects etc. The way Farmacia del sole https://lafarmaciadelsole.it/ display products is very clean, effective, clear and the website is easy to use.

Team and specialisations

Some pharmacies display the pictures and specialisations of the staff to increase trust and to offer a more ‘human’ feeling to clients, as Farmacia Madonna della neve http://farmaciamadonnadellaneve.net/. It is not mandatory, but this helps users feel more comfortable when purchasing online.

Logo of payment methods

It is important that the online pharmacy retailer chooses only reliable and trusted payment methods, that allow the user to pay securely and in fast way. On top of that, the pharmacy website must clearly display logos of payments methods in the footer to help client choose the payment method they will use at the checkout page even before starting the payment process. A good example is displayed on the footer of La farmacia del sole https://lafarmaciadelsole.it/

Why a pharmacy site should offer MyBank as a payment method

MyBank is a great choice for pharmacy website because it allows customers to complete the purchase in a couple clicks, by redirecting the user to the usual familiar online banking secure environment of their own banks. They will be able to access and authorise the payment with their usual user credentials (2 factors authentication). Among the pharmacy clients that have chosen to add MyBank to their payment offer we have Farmacia del sole https://lafarmaciadelsole.it/, Farmacrimi https://farmacrimi.it/, Farmacia Docfarma https://docfarma.it/, Farmacia Madonna della neve http://farmaciamadonnadellaneve.net/ to name a few.

Conclusions

There are some elements which must be present on a pharmacy website to offer clients a great purchasing experience, trust and brand awareness. MyBank allows pharmacy companies to offer clients a fast, simple, and secure payment process, which improves the overall user experience and reliability, features that are very important when buying medicines online.