Future Of Healthcare Website Design

Smart medical website with artificial intelligence and HIPAA compliant CRM is the wave of the future. Included in the the GOLD and PLATINUM service from PatientGain.com

Your healthcare practice needs an intelligent website. Too often, doctors and owners of medical practices will have a custom-built “WordPress pretty” website. Yes, it may be visually appealing, and the aesthetics might be what you want. However, just because something looks pretty on your desktop computer doesn’t mean it’s a useful website for your current and potential patients.

You need a website that will automatically convert itself to a mobile-friendly website and a site that uses artificial intelligence to determine the experience a person has while visiting it. Intelligent websites can boost the conversion rate of your website and send more patients into your waiting room. Ask yourself these questions to see if your website is a smart medical website.

If one dives into the website metrics of their medical website, they will notice something that was not there ten years ago: a tremendous amount of mobile traffic. Mobile traffic, more than likely, should represent more than half of the website visitors you receive throughout the month. While this may not be the case 100% of the time, if you frequently find your desktop traffic outnumbers your mobile visitors, you should check to make sure your site is correctly optimized for mobile traffic. However, the vast majority of medical websites will find most of their traffic comes from mobile sources, like smartphones.

Websites need to be mobile-friendly, as this impacts their rankings in search engines and how often visitors are converted into patients. Many medical practices assume that “mobile-friendly” means the website works just as well on a phone as it does on a desktop. While this is a critical component, a medical practice can have an additional advantage over its competitors by building intelligence into its medical mobile websites. A website that uses various apps to make the experience for a website visitor easier by helping them communicate, find information or accomplish simple tasks can have an incredible impact on website conversions. PatientGain.com has various apps that medical practices can embed into their website to improve a patient experience and provide for a more intelligent medical site.

PatientGain highly recommends medical websites on WordPress. WordPress powers 35% of the internet in 2020 – Worldwide. Fast loading medical sites. GOLD service includes website.

What makes fast loading websites?

The google tool to measure your website performance is :
https://web.dev/measure/
Enter your website URL, and run it multiple times (for example 4 to 6 times), spread out during several minutes.
Then take the average.
All of the four areas should be in green.

11 Steps to make your medical website fast.

Code: Every website is developed using some code. This code must be efficient.
Protocol: HTTP/2, QUIC, HTTP/3
Server: Very fast servers, Litespeed Enterprise, Google Cloud based
PHP: Fast PHP processing, PHP LSAPI ProcessGroup
CDN: Fast CDN, Google Cloud CDN
DNS: Fast DNS providers, Google Cloud DNS
Scalability: As you receive more traffic, the system should scale
Disk: SSD
CPU: Google Cloud N2 instances
Template used for WordPress: This is also very important
Optimized Images: Use smaller images for mobile sites – WordPress offers this setting. Google also reads your mobile site first for SEO rankings. Google also measures how fast your mobile site loads.

Is your website designed for conversion?

Does your website just sit there, providing static information and a phone number to call your facility if patients have follow-up questions? If this is the case, then it is not designed for conversation. Your website should have a direct link with your Contact Database and CRM. PatientGain.com can embed apps that will automatically update you with leads and prospect inquiries. We can securely capture this information and organize it for you to address at your convenience. It is much easier for a patient to fill out a form, which you can respond to via their preferred method of communication, than for them to call and leave a message. Securely connecting your website to your systems gives you an advantage for your competitors and removes the friction points between you and your patients.

Learn about A/B Tested Medical Websites here.

Are you using autoresponders?

Autoresponders are a great way to answer common questions patients may ask automatically. You may be surprised how often people ask the same questions, tying up the time your staff could be using helping patients with more complex needs. We can work with you to create a database of questions and answers, and our medical chatbot will respond to questions it knows. If it comes across something it can’t answer, it will securely capture contact information and forward it to your staff. You will make your team much more efficient without hiring additional bodies for your medical practice.

Sure, you may have specials and promos, but are they embedded into your website and a Facebook business page? Do they both update at the same time?

Promotional deals and specials on your services are a great way to drive business to your medical practice. Many places just place a static message on their website, missing out on the ability to capture patient data. They also may post about a special or promotion on their social media channels, but eventually, this post will be out of date. A more effective way to manage your promotions and specials on your website and Facebook Business page are to embed them into both areas. PatientGain.com has a specials and promotions app you can embed into these two places. Controlled from your dashboard, once you activate a new promotion or special, it is automatically updated on Facebook and your website. Easy, sharable, and always up to date!

Do you thank all of your patients with the same generic page?

If you are, then you are missing out on an opportunity to wow them. Use a Visitor Intelligence Center Built-in that is based on IP Addresses. We will be able to identify who the patient is based on their IP Address and customize a thank you for them as they leave your website. This added touch personalizes a patient’s experience at your practice and on your website, adding to patient loyalty. These kinds of smart website features would be impossible a decade ago, but they are becoming more and more popular today.

Do you know how a potential patient visited your website?

If you do not, then how do you know which one of your marketing campaigns are working well and which ones are just burning your money. PatientGain.com can provide you detailed reports showing you not only where a patient came from but what keywords they used to find you, if applicable. You may know a certain number of patients came to you through Google Search or Bing Search. But do you know:

What words did they use to find your website?
Are these words the right keywords to describe your services?
Are some keywords being used more frequently on Google than Bing?
Did searches come from organic sources or paid ads?

Are you running ads on other websites or have traded links with other providers in the area. It is crucial to know if anyone is visiting your website from these different locations. Monitoring and evaluating referral traffic is critical. We will provide you with information to let you know beyond organic and paid traffic, what websites are also sending traffic to your site.

Do you know when you made a conversation on your website? Is it time stamped?

Website conversations are great! Converting curious website visitors into loyal patients is the goal of every website. However, it is essential to know when precisely that conversion took place. Was it when you were running a particular marketing campaign? Did a flurry of conversations arrive the day a direct mailer was delivered or after an afternoon radio spot aired? Timestamping conversions is vital to evaluate your marketing efforts to determine where conversions came from. While you may not always be able to make a connection between a conversion and a marketing campaign, timestamping will help you look for patterns and hopefully make things a little clearer. Data-driven decisions for your medical practice’s marketing strategy is the best way to make decisions!

How can a texting app help a potential patient visiting a mobile medical website?

A medical practice undoubtedly has spent quite a bit of time creating great content for a website. Despite that effort, which has helped improve a site’s organic rankings, a patient may need additional information. In the past, they would call or email a practice with further questions or requests for more information. More and more medical practices are now using texting apps to communicate with current and potential patients. When used in a mobile setting, it is natural for a patient to text their needs to a medical practice in that environment. It is very rare for someone who has a cell phone not to have some texting service. The vast majority probably have unlimited texting.

A medical practice may wonder why texting was not used widely in the past. The main reason was that there was not a HIPAA-compliant way to use texting for communication. A patient sending a text to a “medical practice cell phone” is not HIPAA compliant. While a text sent from point A to point B is generally secure, a patient’s cell phone and a cell phone sitting on the desk of a medical practice is not secure, access is not limited, and there is no way reliable way to track who uses the cell phone and who does not. A texting app embedded into a site solves most of those issues.

The critical issue with patients sending texts is that their data must be protected to remain HIPAA compliant. Whatever a patient sends to a medical practice needs to be encrypted and stored on a HIPAA compliant server because there is a chance they will send personal health information. A texting app solves this issue by sending the text to a secure dashboard that a medical practice will limit access to specific staff members. From there, they can text a patient back while maintaining HIPAA compliance by not sending any sensitive information back to them.

How can a chatbot help patients on a medical mobile website?

While a patient may need, from time to time, detailed assistance texting provides, sometimes they need simpler assistance. A chatbot helps patients find information and accomplish simple tasks. Why is this valuable? This saves front desk staff valuable time so they can help other patients who have more complex issues. An advantage chatbots have over texting apps is that a chatbot is never offline. A texting app requires a staff member to be on another end to reply to them, and this may take some time. A chatbot can instantly provide answers or help patients accomplish tasks, assuming they are programmed into it.

A medical practice programs the answers to questions or requests a chatbot provides. It can only answer the questions given to it. For a chatbot to be the most effective, a medical practice will usually ask the front desk staff to provide the most common questions they receive over the phone, email, or in person. With these questions programed into a chatbot, a portion of those patients will be helped over the website rather than call or email a clinic, freeing up staff members’ time. When a chatbot can not correctly answer a question or a patient needs additional information, a chatbot can then take that patient’s contact information and forward it to an assigned staff member. The ability to “leave a message” with a chatbot is beneficial for those visiting a website and need help after business hours, like in the middle of the night.

How does providing intelligent directions on a medical mobile website help convert visitors into patients?

Potential patients who visit a medical practice’s website are not yet patients but are interested in the available services. Even before a patient is convinced to select a medical practice for care, they will want to know exactly where a medical practice is located. The ability to easily travel to a medical practice will play a role in a potential patient’s decision-making. If it is difficult or impossible to reach, they should find out now rather than go through the process of making an appointment and being frustrated that they need to start the process all over again.

To help patients get a better idea of the location of a medical practice, many will embed a Google map with the location directly into a website. They can then explore that map on the site or send it to their own Google Maps on their phone for more detailed exploration on a mobile device. From there, they can get directions, see how long it would take to walk there, and even (in some situations) see if there are any public transit options available for them. An embedded Google Map can improve the organic rankings of a site as well.

Some medical websites will also embed a tool where a patient can enter their address and have directions automatically generated for them. These directions can then be explored on their phone or texted to them for future reference as they travel to the medical practice. All in all, the easier you make it for a patient to find the physical location of a medical practice, the more likely they will walk in through the front door and use some of the services.

How can paying bills online with a medical mobile website be helpful to a medical practice?

Many times, when a patient comes to a medical practice for treatment or other services, they are going to have to pay something in terms of a co-pay or co-insurance. Other times, their visit may be covered completely. However, it is not uncommon for an insurance company to deny a claim, adjust its benefits, or not display the correct information during the time of service. As such, a medical practice will need to bill a patient to be paid. This process can be complicated and can require staff members to pay very close attention to various details.

Previously, a patient would have to mail in a check or walk in personally to pay the bill in person with a check or a credit card. Both of these options often result in delays. A medical practice would have to wait until a patient found time during their day to come in or wait for a check to arrive in the mail. Even then, a check often takes several business days to clear before funds become available. Having online bill pay available via a mobile device alleviates many of these issues.

With online bill pay, a patient can submit their debit or credit card information and pay a bill. Funds from this payment are generally available quicker, and bookkeeping is often easier with electronic payments. For the patient, they can quickly pay their account from their phone. Purchasing things through a phone has become very common to the point where many people save their credit card information directly into the phone. Providing this familiar feature to patients will make it easier for them to settle any outstanding bills with their favorite medical practice.

How can a promotions app help my medical mobile website attract new patients?

Like any other consumer out there, patients are always looking for specials, discounts, or other deals. Like other retail stores, it is not uncommon for medical practices to offer these special promotions to new or current patients. A common issue with promotions is how quickly they can be activated and deactivated. Some businesses may forget to deactivate their promotion, leading to patients coming in excited to use something that is no longer valid. These situations can happen when things get busy, and a business forgets to start or end a promotion. Then, a business has to make a tough decision of either refusing a patient who thought they have a valid discount or accept it when it was likely denied to others.

Installing a promotions app into a website solves many of those issues and gives me added benefits. A medical practice can preload the special they want to offer with a start and, if applicable, end dates with a promotions app. There are some cases where a promotion does not have a set end date, and it is left open, such as an introductory special for first-time patients or clients. An added benefit to using a promotions app is that it provides additional tracking and metrics to a medical practice to see how successful it was at attracting business. A medical practice will see how often the page hosting the special is seen and how often the special is downloaded. Combined with tracking how many people come in with the special, a medical practice will have a good idea regarding the special’s effectiveness. For a patient, the ability to acquire a special right from a phone can significantly increase the likelihood that they will use it.

How can having a good Ecommerce / E-shopping experience help a medical practice?

Online shopping, also known as E-Commerce, is not common among medical practices. Not all medical practices will have something to sell in person or online. However, those who do benefit from having an easy-to-use online shopping experience. Places like a medical spa often have various products available to their clients to help with their health and sell these products in their store. Having these things available online saves a patient a trip down to a medical spa. This will lead to higher sales, increased client satisfaction and may even result in more appointments to be scheduled for further treatment. Online shopping is so common today that it is relatively uncommon to find a business without an online shopping component if they sell things at a location. Several important factors contribute to an excellent mobile shopping experience:

The layout of the available products is crucial. An online shopper likes things being organized rather than have everything in one large unorganized list on a single page. Products should be grouped so they can be easily found.
An e-commerce system needs to make it easy to check out and ship things. An integrated e-commerce platform will fill in any stored credit cards or billing information on the phone into the appropriate fields. If someone is not comfortable with storing that information, it should be easy to fill in.
Customer needs to be confident that they are making a secure purchase. Credit Card information and other data need to be encrypted and sent on a secured website. Resources should be spent to have an HTPPS website where sales are made. Most web browsers will (desktop or mobile) will warn people if their purchase is not secure. Any warnings will dramatically decrease a site’s conversion rates.

The experts at PatientGain.com can help a medical practice build intelligence into their medical mobile websites with various apps. We have the apps mentioned above and others that many medical practices have effectively deployed onto their mobile websites. Call today and let our experienced team show you what we have done for other medical practices across the country. Smart websites are the trend websites are going towards across all industries. If you were the last medical practice to get a mobile website or a responsive website, be the first to get a smart website. You will have a technological edge over your competitors and offer your patients customized and efficient online experiences. When you wow them with how useful your website is, they are going to be less likely to search elsewhere for healthcare services. Call PatientGain.com today and let us show you what we can do for your medical practice.

Smart medical website with artificial intelligence and HIPAA compliant CRM is the wave of the future.