In this era of technology, everyone uses the internet to their own advantage, and this even includes people searching for their symptoms or finding a qualified doctor online. According to research, most people tend to look up a doctor online, and that is only possible if your website is created in a way that ranks in Google or any other search engine. Although you can find several website developers to help you build a medical website from scratch, WebMD Practice Pro provides all-in-one solutions that make up for an excellent, convenient, and efficient health care website.
Whether you are an individual practitioner or you own a hospital or a small clinic, creating a website for your healthcare practice the right way will help you gain more patients. Therefore, we have listed below the factors that you should consider when creating a healthcare practice website. Keep reading!
1. Clearly Indicate Your Services
If you don’t clearly mention the services you provide on your website, this will put off the website visitors, and they will leave your website in a matter of seconds. Therefore, it’s indispensable for you to clearly list out the services you provide to be able to differentiate yourself from your competitors.
It is usually recommended to mention your services and the kinds of patients you serve clearly on the homepage so your potential patient is able to see whether they are eligible to get treatment from you.
2. Add Search Functionality
Whenever you have a query, you Google it even with two words and plenty of relevant search results pop up quickly. What if Google didn’t perform the same? Would you be then able to stay there even for more than a few seconds? I highly doubt it.
The same is the case with your medical website. If you think this way, a patient who wants to get treated will for sure waste no time or little energy if they are not able to extract a certain result from a website.
Hence, it is important for you to add a search button on every page of your website. And make sure you put in filters as well, along with automatic suggestions in the search bar, to make the whole search process seamless for a website visitor and convert them into your patient.
3. Make Your Medical Website Mobile-Friendly
It’s more common and convenient for people to use their smartphones in order to search for a query than to sit on their laptops just for a single purpose. Also, Google stated websites that are mobile-friendly rank more than the ones that are not.
This tells how essential it is for you to create your healthcare website while keeping the interface of mobiles in your mind. It will allow you to increase your website traffic and therefore more patients.
Moreover, it’s also important to consider that your mobile-friendly website design should be user-friendly too. You should make sure to optimize the homepage i.e., by adding the most crucial information on the front. Also, feature a quick navigation menu on the top right-hand side to ensure your potential patients are able to access the most relevant content quickly.
4. Create and Share Useful Content
Content marketing is quite cheaper than the conventional methods of marketing, and it is even more powerful to generate leads for you. Writing content for your website that relates to your service and answering any FAQs in detail will show the website visitors how knowledgeable and skilled you are, and this may even convert them into one of your patients.
You should consider hiring a professional content writer to draft articles for your website and make sure to make it easy to understand by the readers who don’t possess the knowledge of complex medical jargon. It should also be kept in mind that the articles must be divided into subheadings, bullet points and short paras otherwise it may be hard for them to stay on your website.
5. Add Visual Components to Your Healthcare Website
Healthcare websites that feature clear and appealing photos and videos tend to perform better than the ones that look like a plain block of text. Also, articles or content with pictures increases the engagement rate, thus, you can start adding relevant pictures to your articles as a first step.
You should also add your own top-notch quality visuals of your doctors or clinic on your website rather than using stock images as they may also be used on other websites.
If you want to add several photos, you should consider making an image carousel rather than adding them separately all over the page. It will allow you to keep a fine balance between visuals and text as you don’t want your website to look super busy.
6. Place Testimonials
Most people overlook the importance of testimonials or reviews of the patients, as they can be a deciding factor for a website visitor. Even if they use testimonials on their website, they place it somewhere in their website where they are least prominent.
Hence, you should always add testimonials where they are easily visible, such as on the bottom of your homepage, and allow the visitors to scroll through them easily and help them make an informed decision.
7. Accelerate the Load Time of Your Website
Most healthcare websites have the slowest load speed and if the content doesn’t load rapidly, you may lose your prospective patient. You can use this factor to your advantage and make your website perform better than your competitors.
Most of the loading time is taken by large image files. As we discussed earlier that it’s important to use pictures, you can resize and compress large image files using online tools to not compromise on either factor.
In addition to this, you should keep checking and simplifying any redirects on your website, as it’s also the culprit for a slow website. This will allow the visitors to quickly move to the newest content without additional frustration.
