Every dental practice needs a website. In 2018, having a dedicated webpage for your clinic is a necessity. A well-designed website with original content and useful information will help your brand. On the flipside, a poorly designed website with hardly any information will get buried in search engine results. If potential clients can’t reach your website, how will they find your practice?
Today’s web pages have come a long way from the very first website created in 1991. You can’t put up a wall of text or some links and expect to attract clients. You need a website that looks good, works on any device, contains original content and useful information about your practice. Here are 3 tips for a great dental website:
Make It Mobile Friendly
A growing number of website visits and searches are conducted on smartphones. With phones and tablets becoming more powerful each year, there is a shift away from desktops to mobile. The quickest way to drive visitors away from your website is by making sure it is not optimized for small screens and touch-friendly interfaces.
A mobile-friendly website is about more than loading pages quickly. You have to arrange content so that it can be viewed on a small screen. If you have forms or pages where the user has to enter data, they should be able to do it using the tiny keyboards available on smartphones. You have to ensure that ads or banners do not disturb the website experience on slow connections. In other words, users should be able to view and interact with your page on any device with a screen.
Target Customers, Not Search Engines
Too many websites push people away in the race to be on the first page in search engine results. You’ll find hundreds of companies willing to optimize your website for search. It doesn’t even cost much. Within a few days, you’ll have a website that’s on the first page of search results. Search engine ranking improves visibility but at what cost?
The reasons those websites rank so high are the same ones that drive people away. Optimizing for search means stuffing your website with bad links, filling pages with meaningless keywords, and copying content from other pages. Why would such a website impress prospective patients? They’re looking for information about your clinic and staff, original content and ways to make an appointment.
Keep your target audience in mind when designing your website. You should strive to make your clients happy, not search engines.
Don’t Use Stock Content
How often have you come across company websites that are bland and boring? That’s probably because they lack original and personal content. They might have pictures that are stock or content that appears relevant on the surface but doesn’t inform the user of anything. The thing is your practice website shouldn’t be like that.
Potential clients come to your website to learn more about you, your staff, and your practice. Show them pictures of what your clinic looks like and how happy your staff members are to work there. Why use stock images of models when you can use pictures of real people instead?
Display your contact information front and center. Show them the reality of your clinic, not some fake story. Dedicate a page to reviews from clients, both good and bad. If you have a patient portal, link to it from your website as well.
Quite often, your practice website is the first thing clients will check even before making an appointment. It’s your chance to impress patients with a thoughtfully designed website that has all the answers they’re looking for.
