Ah, the million dollar question. What will make my office’s website stand out from the others? What will entice people to visit my page vs my competitors?
At the Medical Business Academy have come up with some excellent tips to help you maximize and utilize the space you have on the internet. I would like to start off by saying, it’s very important that your page should be user friendly, have great navigation, and load quickly. Most visitors nowadays are very impatient and fickle. If a website is hard to read, difficult to navigate and takes a lifetime to load, you can be sure they will be leaving your site and moving on to your competitor because they get frustrated. Ensure your navigation buttons are obvious and in an easy to follow format so that your visitors do not get lost on your website. Ideally, a visitor should be able to arrive on your site and not have to think extensively about where they should click next – moving from one part of the page to another should not be difficult or frustrating.
Make sure you have the most updated contact and address information that can easily be found (for example: your telephone number on the top right hand corner of the website and a contact form on the home page where you can capture all their details). Inaccurate information will turn off consumers, whether it’s a wrong number, outdated product information or simple grammatical errors which visitors will also notice. I can’t tell you how many times I personally have changed my mind about visiting a business once I realized their phone number is inaccurate or outdated, or I am unable to contact them. Most of us lead very busy lifestyles and do not have the time or patience to be sifting through multiple search engines to find out where your practice is located and how to reach you. If I cannot see the information or access it easily, I will move on.
Keeping a clean, professional, attractive design is also essential. Forget the bells and whistles and focus on the essentials. Use eye-catching colors, readable fonts, and rich images and video. Video is one of the greatest ways to communicate the personality of your brand quickly and effectively. It’s ten times more powerful to have video than text on a page. Getting people to have an emotional connection with your business either through video or images is a key factor in securing long-term clients and patients and will entice them to contact you vs your competitor.
Having the right content. This one is tricky. You want your page to be informative, but not too crowded you overwhelm and confuse the reader. Keep the content on your web pages educational but to the point. Patients are extremely informative and knowledgable now, so you want to make sure you have credibility and original content. Be clear and honest about the products/services you are offering. Think of your website as a resume: it should tell your prospective patients what you do, why you are different and why they should visit your practice for a consultation. Be sure to include any accreditations and/or certifications or awards the Physicians or practice have received. Patients get excited when they see awards affiliated with your practice! The secret to keeping your audience engaged and coming back for more comes down to creating content that’s informative, helpful, useful and fun.
Easily accessible no matter where you are. In order to provide a truly great user experience, your site needs to be compatible with multiple different operating systems and devices. Someone may have an android phone and using google to search your site on their phone, and may have a Macbook and use Safari or Firefox at home. You want your site to be mobile friendly and ipad friendly, as well as computer friendly.
Lastly, connecting to social media. Use your website to drive clients to your clinic’s Facebook fan page, Twitter account, LinkedIn company profile, and even YouTube channel if you have one. No matter how much you choose to ignore it, marketing or posting on social media is essential nowadays. In addition, having a blog on your website with great stories, case studies and tips for your readers can be very powerful to push them to call and make that appointment. If you are unable to keep your blog portion of your site regularly updated, then I actually advise against having one on your site. Not consistently updating content that gets dated, such as blog posts, could end up doing more damage than help for your brand in the long run.
No matter which tips you decide to use, remember that at the end of the day, the most important part is the full patient experience. You may have an exceptional website that will make you stand out, get lots of visitors and entice patients to call your practice; but if the patient is unable to get through on the phone, does not have a great experience in the waiting room or during the consultation, or gets turned off by the checkout process, then they may not be coming back once they walk out that door.
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