5 Elements Every Medical Practice Website Needs to Build a Strong Online Presence

1
5 Elements Every Medical Practice Website Needs
to Build a Strong Online Presence
or your medical practice to establish a strong
online presence, you need to make sure your
website is packed with attractive and efficient
features. Some features can make a lot of
difference both in terms of helping patients
trust your practice as well as improving your
websites user experience. These features can
make your practice stand apart from the
competitors and give it a competitive edge. It
is imperative that your website meets the purpose
you are investing in to drive more patients to
your practice. This means every visitor should
find the information he or she needs and provide
you with the necessary notifications you need to
continue to optimize the website. Most healthcare
marketers are focused on design. No doubt a
beautiful web design can provide the immediate
impact you want visitors to have, but unless your
website is driving revenue for your practice, it
is not worth the investment. Conversely, a
website designer may not be able to offer all of
the features your medical practice website needs
to be successful. Conversion, search
engine-friendly and social media optimization
should not be add-ons. Instead, they should be
baselines for any successful website.
2
A well-made website will help increase patients
trust in your services, attract visitors to
provide contact information for mailing lists and
enhance the ROI of your online marketing efforts.
No matter how many people visit your website, if
it is unable to attract new patients or if your
website conversion rate is less than 5 percent,
it is time to optimize your medical practice
website. After all, according to an industry
report, increasing conversion rates by just 1
percent can reduce your media costs by almost 33
percent. How Can You Improve Your Website? Can
online searchers or potential patients easily
find your website? Most medical practitioners are
not able to rely on referrals from other
physicians on a regular basis. They have to
depend on their potential patients doing online
research to find out about their practice and
services. This is where search engine
optimization (SEO) can help you. You can
significantly improve your websites online
visibility by implementing effective SEO tactics
based on the latest best practices. Being found
online is what will drive traffic to your website
and to your medical practice. A professionally
and esthetically designed website is the first
thing a potential patient will see and will be
the primary factor when deciding whether to
contact your practice. Just as a rule of thumb,
if your existing website is more than two or
three years old, signs of aging are likely to
have set in. Not just in appearance, but also in
effectiveness. Giving your website a professional
makeover is the first step in creating a
marketing strategy that will set your practice
apart from competitors and help you grow your
business. However, to be fully effective, that
makeover has to go deeper, below the
surface. Here are the five essential elements
that all modern healthcare websites must include
if they are looking to attract more patients.
3
1. Simple Navigation Is Essential Your website
exists for a reason, and that reason is to help
you attract patients and to grow your practice.
If your target audience is faced with choices of
buttons to click or chunks of text to read, they
are likely to give up and move on to your
competitors site. Generally, the most successful
websites are those that are easy to navigate and
appear to be credible. Conversely, visitors tend
to avoid sites that are complex to navigate and
seem unreliable. Luckily, there are easy ways to
ensure your website falls into the former
category, not the latter. Lets imagine your
website is a map to some buried treasure. Your
goal is to help visitors find the gold that they
are looking for. Make sure that wherever they
land on your website, they can search for the
desired information quickly and easily. You must
remember website development is a dynamic
process. While certain rules remain constant, the
technology and user behavior are always
evolving. Effective website design must include
the ability to measure what is working and what
needs improvement. Look at it this way Unless
their online experience exceeds the office
experience, your visitors will continue their
Google search to the next healthcare
website. Successful websites also feature images
that lend a human face to the practice. You can
post pictures of your staff and virtually welcome
patients into your office. According to research
from KissMetrics, adding images to a webpage can
increase conversion rates by 95 percent. Video
content can provide a significant boost, as well.
According to Animoto, nearly 73 percent of U.S.
adults are willing to make purchasing decisions
after watching an online video.
4

• Make Your Website Mobile-Responsive Do you
  remember the last time you landed on an annoying
  healthcare website while browsing on your
  smartphone? Didnt you go mad scrolling from left
  to right to read the text, or zooming in and out?
  Do you also remember what you did next? We bet
  you moved on to the next healthcare website, one
  that was more compatible with your smartphone
  screen. Your target audience may experience the
  same frustration when they land on your
  nonresponsive website.
• If you want to ensure that all your potential and
  existing patients stick around once they have
  found your website, you need to assume that their
  first point of contact is going to be your
  website, that too while they are browsing on a
  smartphone. The recent data for healthcare
  customers and the way they use their smart
  devices is quite compelling. According to
  studies, almost 44 percent of patients who
  searched for healthcare websites went on to make
  an appointment. This fact points to the
  importance of an engaging experience for
  smartphone users. In addition, Googles algorithm
  penalizes websites that are not
  mobile-responsive. By having a mobile-responsive
  website, you allow your practice to connect with
  these highly engaged healthcare consumers.
• Instead of building separate websites for desktop
  and mobile users, Google suggests healthcare
  marketers build one website that can scale up and
  down to fit the different screen sizes, thus
  making it responsive. This means your practice
  website will automatically change its dimensions
  to fit the screen of the device being used to
  search.
• According to Googles study, nearly 65 percent of
  searches began on a mobile device. The inability
  of your website to adjust to devices will create
  a negative user experience and may result in
  significant revenue loss for the practice.
• Testimonials Are the New Word-of-Mouth Do your
  patients appreciate and acknowledge your
  excellent staff and services? Then do not be shy
  about getting that feedback and using it to
  promote your

5

• practice. You can think of innovative ways to
  integrate patient reviews into your website
• Create an entire page dedicated to reviews and
  testimonials.
• Display random snippets throughout your website.
• Make a small video clip.
• Include specific reviews on the products or
  services page.
• However, if you choose to integrate them, make
  sure you display them at a prominent position on
  your website. Knowing that you have happy
  patients can give your potential patients
  confidence that you are the best practice for
  their needs. Potential patients are like any
  other customer their buyer journey starts with
  research. Testimonials from your existing
  patients feature prominently in their
  decision-making process. Therefore, one way to
  grow your practice is to strategically grow and
  improve your online reviews. In addition to
  quality, the quantity of online reviews matters
  because it reinforces the fact that a lot of
  patients have benefited from your treatments. No
  one wants to be a guinea pig. To further
  strengthen the credibility of your practice, you
  can consider creating an awards and honors page
  on your website. Professional accreditations from
  medical associations, local publications and
  public contests will affirm the personality of
  your practice. You can also include icons or
  links for your social media accounts on your
  website, where they can be instantly visible to
  visitors. These can serve as indirect
  testimonials, highlighting that your practice is
  trustworthy and engaged with patients.
• 4. Blogs Attract Visitors Attention A blog is
  the most effective tool you can add to your
  website. At the heart of any effective website is
  a practices blog content. Consistent publishing
  of relevant content is what demonstrates your
  expertise and helps potential patients find you
  in a sea of online competition. Once visitors
  land on your website, make it easy for them to
  sign up to receive blog updates via email, and
  make your blog posts easily shareable via social
  networks by including social share buttons.

6

• Blogging offers extended marketing benefits for
  any healthcare practice and helps you
• Brand yourself as an expert.
• Attract potential patients and keep them
  interested in your practice.
• Educate existing patients about your services.
• Increase SEO by producing more searchable
  content. The more unique your content is, the
  brighter are your chances to show up in search
  results.
• The majority of potential patients say blogs help
  them discover new medical practices. Educating
  the masses not only increases awareness of your
  practice, but it also enables you to have
  in-person talks with better- informed
  individuals. Your blog is the best place to share
  a new five- minute video about a procedure or
  write a few sentences to set the stage.
  Infographics are a useful type of visual content
  that can have a far greater impact. As you
  populate your blog with more content, it is
  important to make that content searchable. You
  can make content easier to find by categorizing
  it by topic, featured or most recent.
• 5. Share Relevant and Interesting Content
  Sharing fresh and relevant content is key to
  ensuring your website is not only effective but
  is relevant to your target audience. In order to
  create useful content, you must understand the
  needs and demands of your target audience. If
  possible, use emotion in your content to connect
  with your audience. In addition, you must ensure
  content is SEO-optimized so your targeted
  audience can easily find it online.
• The first step toward creating an effective
  healthcare website is attracting relevant
  visitors. To do this, you need to follow two
  fundamental rules Create content that your
  target audience is seeking and promote that
  content consistently.

7
These rules work best together. You cannot follow
one without the other. This is because creating
great content may attract target audience to your
website, but without consistency, your audience
will lose interest. Similarly, quantity is not an
alternate for quality. Stuffing your website with
run-of-the-mill content may help you attract a
few visitors, but they will quickly spot a lack
of substance in the content, and your practice
reputation will suffer as a result.
For your website content to be useful, it must be
engaging. Engaging content may include images,
graphics and catchy headlines. The most important
function of a website is to convert leads to new,
paying patients. To achieve this, it is important
to serve potential patients the information they
are looking for. In addition to other forms of
content, new patients are looking for clear and
easy guidelines to connect with your practice.
When potential patients want to make an
appointment, they do not want to search every
page of your website trying to figure
8
out the process to schedule a visit. In all
likelihood, if they cannot find that information
easily, they will give up. To handle such
situations, put your phone number on both the
header and footer of each page. Conclusion Havin
g a website for your medical practice is very
important. As a healthcare practitioner, an
investment in your website will pay dividends in
the form of new patients and improved online
visibility. You will experience increased
traffic, better conversion rates and increased
revenue. If you want to build a healthcare
website that is both attractive and efficient,
you need to be all-in. If you are considering
launching or revamping your website, make sure
you work with a team of experts who have
experience in your industry and know how to build
an effective healthcare website. When you do, you
will understand that a professionally built
website truly is a force to be reckoned with. At
Practice Builders, we are pleased to provide you
with a complimentary assessment of your existing
website. Schedule an appointment today, and our
medical practice marketing experts will help you
design a new website or upgrade your existing
one. We can help you increase traffic, attract
new patients and grow revenue. At Practice
Builders, we look forward to serving your
practice.