No matter what your business is these days, your website is the face of your organization and your brand – and yes, that’s true even for doctors and their medical practices.
Historically, many doctors were great at their profession and helping their patients, but they weren’t always very good at marketing themselves. We still see that today, many medical professions have cheap, outdated, and outdated websites that do little to help the success of the profession and, even worse, can reflect poorly on them as a physician.
A strong website and online presence should be an option for healthcare providers. Patients are constantly looking for health information and are looking for new doctors online. Additionally, having an effective website can simplify patient check-ups and communications, create an accessible patient portal, and help educate patients about your practice’s procedures as well as important health topics.
To support the success of your practice, your website needs to attract and inform new and existing patients. So, where should you start?
If you’re a healthcare provider and are in the process of evaluating your current site or planning a website design project for your practice, here are 13 steps to building an effective website that will support your practice’s growth, strengthen your brand, and get your future patients in front of them.
1. Build credibility and trustworthiness
Build credibility; immediately by having a modern and professional website, you increase the credibility of your profession and your doctors. But this is just the beginning. One of the main goals you should have for your website design is to ask yourself, how can I increase the credibility of my profession and doctors on the site? Because if you achieve this goal, it will help you find new patients.
Another way to ask the same question is, “What content or information portrays us as quality doctors or experts in our medical field or profession?” Physician bios, educational information, certifications and credentials, memberships and leadership positions in prominent associations, press releases, local and national awards, patient testimonials, and case studies are all options to consider.
Using public reviews (Google, etc.) or top physician review sites, relevant to your field, is another way to build trust in your team’s abilities. The more ways to build informational credibility on your website, the easier it will be for prospective patients to consider your practice for their healthcare needs.
2. Make it mobile-friendly
This should be obvious by now, but your website should be compatible with the device your visitor is using (phone, watch, iPad, desktop, etc.) so users can easily browse your site and find what they want, regardless of the device.
In 2018, 58% of all U.S. website visits were made via mobile devices, so your site needs to work well on mobile phones. Keep in mind that not all mobile-friendly sites are created equal.
A site can technically be mobile-friendly, but it may not be as user-friendly for mobile users as it should be. In addition to usability issues with outdated technologies, Google also places sites that are not mobile-friendly at a disadvantage in search rankings.
3. Focus on ease of use and easy-to-find information
A person visiting your professional website will likely be looking for:
- General information about your profession (what is your specialty, where you are, etc.)
- Specific medical information (symptoms, conditions, treatments, etc.)
- Information related to using you as a medical provider to them (steps and policies, day and night contact information, emergency information, insurance, appointments, medical forms, post-operative instructions, etc.)
Design your site to make it easy to find information, while leveraging technology to improve customer/patient service. While at the same time, reducing your staff’s workload and phone time.
Consider a clearly visible Patient Center where everything they need is easily accessible. And make sure you have basic site search capabilities on your website.
4. Answer patients’ questions
The more basic questions you can answer for your patients online, the more time your staff will have for more important work or patient care. Consider having a questions page in your resource area. Start with the basics about your procedures, insurance, and policies.
If you have a unique area of expertise, you may want to answer basic questions about what you do or don’t do as a physician. When determining what to include in answering these questions, consider the illiterate. To determine what questions your patients ask, ask your staff about the most common questions they receive in person and over the phone; this is the best way to do this.
5. Clearly state the specialty
This may seem obvious, but many physicians may not realize that non-physicians (i.e., most site visitors) do not understand the nuances or breadth of each specialty. For example, many people do not know the specific differences between a general cardiologist, an internist, and a cardiovascular surgeon.
You may be a general surgeon, but you also specialize in osteopathic medicine and osteopathic manipulative therapy (OMT). If you feel it makes a difference in your practice, use it to your advantage and include it on your site. Or if you are a neurosurgeon and focus on non-invasive treatments or regenerative medicine like stem cell therapy. You should clearly state your areas of focus on your homepage, making it easy for visitors to quickly communicate, and using images or icons.
6. Have both a pre-launch and ongoing business plan
Many of the components of preparing a new site have already been discussed, but preparing a map and content plan for your site is crucial to a successful project and an effective medical website. Start with a general site plan, divided by menu items and main pages.
Then start breaking down your main medical services or areas of expertise (treatments, procedures, diagnostic tests, etc.). You should also include information about common illnesses or conditions you treat, as well as underlying symptoms, but whether this content is placed in its own section or included on treatment-related pages depends on your website strategy.
Also, be sure to highlight any unique services that set your practice apart, such as video galleries explaining procedures, online bookings, or virtual visits.
In your business plan, in the “About” section, include employee dos and don’ts to make your team unique, as well as relevant educational and career achievements along with photos. If you have any specific doctors you’ve recognized or received awards for, highlight that on a separate page or as part of your doctor bio. If your facility is unique or impressive, photos can be beneficial.
As mentioned earlier, think about what content you should include in your “Patient Resources” area to increase usability and efficiency. Before designing a new site, it’s important to map out the structure of your website. Having a consistent business plan content is equally important, as it will build your professional credibility and drive site optimization and traffic over time.
So as you plan for your new site, think about the areas of your site that you will update over time as you strive to promote your practice or strengthen your relationship with current and prospective patients.
For a business plan, I suggest starting with a blog or news section as an effective tool for educating and engaging with patients. Blogging just once or twice a month about health tips, new news or developments in your specialty, new areas of focus or services you offer, or general relevant news (new doctors, awards, public relations, human rights, etc.) can be very effective.
You can generate more traffic with a little time and effort by sharing blog posts on social media sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.). You might also consider a type of medical case study “success stories” that provide insight into the lives of real patients and the benefits they have received from your profession.
These are especially useful when it comes to adding information to your site about complex procedures or new procedures that many people don’t fully understand. Depending on your specialty (in the beauty field), before and after photos can support your results. And if you are an expert in a field, adding videos of new procedures can be a great way to market your business and expertise!
7. Optimize your visibility with SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is probably one of the most overlooked tasks because it takes a lot of time and can also add a significant amount to the cost of developing your website.
A proper SEO strategy and execution can often yield the greatest ROI for your medical practice, as it can increase your site’s visibility in search engines (Google, Bing, etc.) while positively impacting traffic and new patients.
The first step to successful website visibility in search engines is thorough keyword research and prioritization. This process helps you understand exactly how patients and prospective patients are searching for doctors and professionals like you in your geographic area. This may seem like a simple process, but there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of terms related to a specific type of doctor or medical specialty.
For example, let’s say you’re a neurosurgeon. Some people will certainly type that exact term (neurosurgeon) into Google, and perhaps they’ll add their city or state. But they might also be searching for neurosurgery, spine specialist, best spine surgeon, or back specialist.
But that’s just the beginning. They might also be searching for medical conditions like lumbar spinal stenosis, herniated disc, scoliosis, or chronic back pain. Or perhaps they are looking for related treatments such as spine surgery, spinal fusion, stem cell injections, steroid shots for back pain, or platelet-rich plasma injections.
There may be hundreds of keyword terms related to your specific function. In such a perfect world, you would want to show up for one of those terms to everyone. The most relevant ones related to your profession and the terms that people search for the most (with the highest search volume). But to be truly successful, prioritize which terms are the most important to your profession. Only then can you create a website and content (SEO) that can help you achieve your goals.
Once you have done your research and prioritized the SEO keywords you expect to appear at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs), then the on-site search engine optimization (SEO) can begin. This includes all the strategies related to your site structure, the pages in your sitemap, and your ongoing content marketing strategy.
It also includes what we call blocking and resolving or best practices, including creating browser title tags, meta descriptions, blog structure, and more. I don’t expect many medical professionals to be experts in search engine optimization strategies and tactics, but you should know enough to ask competent vendors about their offerings and what they use when it comes to SEO.
8. Find a website partner with expertise in marketing and technology
When searching for the best digital vendor or agency to design and develop your website, you should try to find one that specializes in both marketing and technology. This may seem obvious, but you’ll often find agencies that are only strong on one side of the equation, not both (especially when they’re small).
Make sure they understand both the website and the broader digital marketing landscape, including SEO, social marketing, and content. Technically, make sure they have the necessary staffing resources to execute your current project, as well as support.
Hiring an agency with a limited skill set may result in a site that isn’t as effective as you’d like, or it may result in you needing additional, costly resources.
9. Find a Quality Content Management System (CMS)
Often, your designer and developer will recommend a content management system (CMS) to use for your new website. This will ensure that the CMS is easy for non-technical editors to use. Anyone on your staff will be able to update the website.
Also, make sure to find out what is included in your hosting and subscription plans. If you are paying a monthly or annual fee, ask if the following are included:
Technical support, software updates, file updates, security, speed and uptime monitoring. If these are not available, be sure to ask how the vendor monitors these and how much they cost. This will ensure you understand both current and potential future costs, so you won’t be surprised in the future.
10. Leverage Other Tools (Marketing Tools)
Think of your website as a hub and center of gravity for your medical practice. Link patients, partners, and prospects to other useful information and tools they need. As you plan your site, link it to useful tools such as a patient portal or practice management software, EMR, or EHR.
If you don’t have any tools currently, you might also consider scheduling software so patients can easily make and change appointments. Regardless of what you use, you want your website to be designed so that your patients can easily access information and technology that will make it easier to work with your team.
11. Make someone accountable
Many small organizations do everything right until they launch their website and then forget about it. Don’t be like them! This step is critical if you want your website to be a long-term success and an asset to your practice.
You should designate someone on your staff to be responsible for your website, not only during the project, but as you move forward. They should be accountable for ongoing content changes, any updates needed over time, support issues, and its ultimate success, which should add value to your business.
Depending on their time and skills, the website leader could be the person who updates the content, or you may decide to outsource it to a vendor/partner.
Regardless of who is doing the tactical execution, someone on your staff should have a big picture, forward-looking vision of how your site can add the most value. Without ownership, you likely won’t be able to maximize the long-term ROI potential of your sites.
12. Measuring Results
Measuring results is certainly no less important, be sure to measure what’s happening on your website. As Peter Drucker once said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” In the case of your website, these statistics start with high-level metrics like visits, time on site, page views, bounce rates, as well as page and content views.
But you should also consider measuring landing pages, site documents, and SEO keyword rankings, so you understand and maximize traffic and visibility for your business. At the very least, you should make sure your site is connected to Google Analytics, which is free and provides you with a significant amount of information.
The more you understand about your site and your visitors, the easier it will be to make changes over time that add value to your patients as well as your profession.