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Medical Website Design Must Haves

Medical Website Design Must Haves

Your website is the face of your practice. Don’t ignore it.

The website for your medical practice will be the touchpoint for the vast majority of your patients. It needs to be operating to convert as many website visitors as possible into loyal patients. While your website may be professionally designed by an agency, be sure it has some of these critical elements. If you feel any are missing, your site may not be doing everything it can to drive up your patient count.

All websites should be based on A/B tested designs

Future of medical websites for doctors includes intelligent apps and HIPAA compliant CRM

Step 1: Posting Patient Reviews 

Most people see an online review as good as personal recommendations from a family member or friend. This is good news for your medical practice because relying on your staff’s friends and family to promote your medical practice may not be the most effective medical marketing strategy. While many medical practices collect patient reviews on their Google, Yelp, Facebook, or Foursquare profiles, many leave them there. Take the best reviews you’ve received and place them on your website where someone can read them. This will reinforce any positive reviews someone may have read on your profile, and it will add unique content to your website, improving your overall organic rankings.

Be mindful that anything you post remains HIPPA-compliant. You do not want to post any review that may allow someone to identify who it is. Also, be sure to swap out those reviews every so often. Try to keep reviews on your site fresh, so someone isn’t reading about a glowing review about one of your doctors that hasn’t worked there in 5 years.

Step 2: Use High-Quality Pictures On Your Website

Pictures are worth a thousand words, so you want to make sure your pictures tell a good story. Use high-quality photos that show your facility, and the staff there who will take care of patients when visiting your clinic. While you do not need to spend thousands of dollars on a photographer or a camera, take clear, quality photos in good lighting. Avoid putting blurry images on your website taken on a gloomy day. They should be as bright and as inviting as your staff is when a new person walks through the front doors. Do not use any graphic photos, or if you do, be sure there is a warning first, so no one is shocked by seeing them. You can use stock photos, but ensure they are of high quality and are not being used by your competitors. Some stock photos also look rather “fake” so avoid using ones that seem “off” when looking at them. (You’ll know it when you see it.)

Step 3: Content That Is Answering Questions For Patients

When someone visits your website, they are usually looking for information. Your content should be centered around answering those questions. To improve your website’s overall organic rankings, write out those questions as headers to specific sections of your content. If someone searches that exact question, you stand a better chance as being presented as a relevant result for that search engine. Your content should also push how your clinic’s services can help a patient. The content should “speak” to the patient, telling them why they should pick your medical practice for their health care solution. 

On your website, each of the services or treatments you offer should have their page dedicated to it. This approach will help your overall organic rankings and help keep information organized. Patients are generally going to search for a specific service or treatment, and not want a page listing every single thing you have to offer. Splitting these topics up into different pages will help your patients navigate your website and search engines provide relevant results to users.

Step 4: Making It Easy For Doctors To Refer Patients 

You likely will refer some patients to another doctor who can provide more specialized care. There are also doctors in the area who do not offer the services you provide and need to refer patients to you. To keep the flow of referrals high into your clinic, you need to make it as easy as possible for physicians to refer patients to your medical clinic. Dedicate a page for physicians to refer patients to your clinic and outline everything you can do for their patients. You should have an easy and secure way for physicians to send over medical records without them having to make a call or leave a message. Your home page should have a prominent button that allows doctors or their staff to click and begin the referral process. The fewer clicks and phone calls someone has to make, the more likely you are to secure a referral.

Step 5: Prominent Call To Actions

What is the overall goal of your website? When someone visits your site, what do you want them to do after they are done looking at the details of your service pages? Whatever that is, there should be a button or banner instructing them what to do next. Some typical Call To Actions include:

• Book an appointment
• Call
• Request More Information
• Request A Consultation
• Submit A Request

The easier it is for someone to accomplish a goal, the more likely you are to convert a website visitor to a patient.

Step 6: Search Engine Optimization Of Your Website

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a well-known term when it comes to medical websites. Good SEO work will boost your overall organic rankings for your target keywords. This is accomplished by using target keywords and phrases throughout your content. While it is an excellent first step to implement these SEO strategies onto your website, many medical practices stop there and do not go the extra step. You need to optimize not only what your patients will read, but the site itself. There are things that patients do not see on the backend of the site that can help its organic reach. These things include:

• H1 Tags
• H2 Tags
• Image Tags
• Title Tags
• Meta Tags
• Image Optimization
• Responsive Website
• Mobile Friendly 

The experts at PatientGain.com can help you with these website features, and we incorporate them into every site we design for our clients. As new trends begin to emerge, we research them and implement new SEO updates behind the scenes to keep you competitive in your community. Call today and set up an appointment to speak with our specialists.

Setup Initial Meeting With PatientGain

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? 

11 Steps to make your medical website fast.

  1. Network: Extremely fast network, Example: Google Premium Network
  2. Protocol: HTTP/2, QUIC, HTTP/3
  3. Server: Very fast servers, Litespeed Enterprise 
  4. PHP: Fast PHP processing, PHP LSAPI ProcessGroup 
  5. CDN: Fast CDN, Example: Google Cloud CDN 
  6. DNS: Fast DNS providers, Example: Google Cloud DNS
  7. Scalability:  As you receive more traffic, the system should scale
  8. Disk: SSD – A solid-state drive (SSD) is a newer, faster type of device that stores data on instantly-accessible memory chips
  9. CPU: Google Cloud N2 instances (Example)
  10. Template used for WordPress: This is also very important (Template should not make unnecessary round trips)
  11. 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.

Read more about HIPAA compliant WordPress websites for doctors. 

Read more about examples of WordPress websites for doctors. 

Anatomy Of Good Medical Marketing 

Eight Steps For Achieving Great ROI Results for Doctors

The term “SEO” can have different meaning to different professionals, but we will assume that you are a doctor, physician, dentist, surgeon or an administrator of a practice.  We have seen that these professionals mean high search rankings, and simply want to acquire more patients using “SEO”.  So based on this, we will define SEO beyond the Search Engine Optimization strategies. To our audience, doctors and practice managers they mean Good Medical Marketing and its composition.

Step 1 : Website Overall Strategy – Including the Website and Facebook business page

Step 2 : Website Content Marketing

Step 3 : Local SEO & Organic Strategy

Step 4 : Social Media Marketing

Step 5 : Online Advertising Plan

Step 6 : Online Reviews Management & Marketing

Step 7 : Email Marketing & Email Automation

Step 8 : Conversion Automation 

These 8 steps are the core anatomy of a typical Healthcare practice’s medical marketing plan.
 

Healthcare Advertising VS Healthcare Marketing

Many healthcare professionals confuse Healthcare Advertising  with Healthcare Marketing.

Advertising is just ONE of the many “things”, “programs” or “techniques” launched to achieve a successful Marketing Program.  So Medical advertising is one, but very important part of Medical Marketing for a practice.  For example if you are a pediatric physician with focus on urgent care for children, and your goal is to acquire more patients, you may want to “market” your practice in 20 mile radius for potential parents of patients who may seek Pediatric Urgent Care.  For this effort you would typically  have many things to do :

Step 1: Sign for the building
Step 2: Business cards
Step 3: Doctor’s bio printed and promoted to local primary care physicians
Step 4: Providing free “meet-and-greet” for parents of potential pediatric patients
Step 5: Collaboration with local schools for “low-cost” physicals for school athletes 
Step 6: Mail drop in 5 mile radius using USPS mail and flyers for parents of potential pediatric patients
Step 7: Networking with other local businesses close to your own location
Step 8: Using social media campaigns
Step 9: Making the lobby of the clinic a pleasing place for parents of potential pediatric patients and for children
Step 10: Referral program to market using existing for parents of potential pediatric patients
Step 11: Launching your online strategy to market your practice
Step 12: Offline advertising offline for your healthcare practice
Step 13: Online Advertising for your healthcare practice

Healthcare Advertising Defined

Advertising for doctors can be offline or online. Offline advertising for doctors refers to Billboards, Newspapers, Paper Yellow Pages, Ads in Cinemas, Radio Ads.  

Online Advertising for doctors refers to advertising focused on internet based mediums. For example:

  1. Google search advertising
  2. Facebook display ads
  3. SEO / Search Engine Optimizations
  4. Website conversion techniques to improve the actual patients generation from your website
  5. Advertising on Instagram 
  6. Email marketing
  7. SMS/Text based marketing
  8. Display advertising 

PatientGain.com is a proven medical marketing solution, includes apps, websites, SEO, HIPAA compliance and account management.

To learn about What is the Foundation of Medical SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for Doctors 
To learn about How SEO Works For Doctors Websites, this is a good starting page. 
To learn about Short-cut SEO for Medical Practices, this is a good starting page.
To learn about Pricing and cost of SEO services for medical practices, this is a good starting page. 
To learn about How Much Do Doctors Spend On Advertising?
To learn about Medical SEO Voice Search Optimization For Doctors (BERT)
To learn about Local Medical SEO For Doctors
To learn about Mobile SEO For Medical Websites
To learn about Zero-Click SEO for Doctors & Medical Practices
To learn about Benefits Of Medical SEO Marketing
To learn about Key Items For SEO Evaluation of Medical Websites
To learn about Avoid Risky Plans – Use Proven Medical Marketing Strategies
To learn about Medical Marketing Using Emotionally Compelling Offline Media
To learn about Pre Launch Medical Marketing Checklist for Doctors
To learn about Medical SEO vs. Medical Advertising – Which One Is Better?
To learn about Is Your Medical Website Design “Future Proof”?