Your prospective patients come to you via the internet, most likely. They may have heard your name from a friend or family member, but they will check out your website – and possibly scan the web for reviews from former patients. If they have a dental problem, they might have a pretty good idea what treatment they need.
A few tips to help you engage prospective patients – and convert them into paying patients.
Rule One: Simplify your website
To attract prospective patients, you need to engage them. They need a sense, right up front, that your service is valuable and that you (the dentist) is trustworthy. They want to see expertise. They want to see that you care about their well-being.
Your website must convey a customer-friendly attitude at all levels. Can they easily find information about your background? Can they easily find information about treatments you offer? Is the home page welcoming and easy to navigate – or will visitors get confused and start searching other nearby dentists?
If you install the software “Hotjar” on the homepage, you can see exactly where patients are actually clicking. It’s a goldmine of information. When you analyze the results, you’ll see just how easy or confusing your website is.
Analyzing your home page
Too many distracting photos, text blocks and buttons on the home page turn people off. They won’t really know where to go next.
For example, does your website have a “slider” or “rotating banner”?
These have been very popular among designers, but in truth they move too fast for the reader. The text is gone before they can finish reading. They don’t have time to click the button. These sliders and rotating banners are notorious for bad user experience and reducing conversion rates.
A few more key points:
Think about what people look for when first arriving on the site. Is it treatments and price? Do they want to know if you’re taking on new patients?
Do you have a value proposition prominently displayed on the home page? This is a short “tag line” that summarizes your unique selling points.
A well-designed home page should have these features:
Treatment pages
These pages are obviously critical to your practice, so patients need to find them easily. How is your website set up? Do patients have to click multiple times to see your treatments – to find the one they need? Simplify, simplify, simplify.
We don’t want patients hovering over images to see text.
Organize your treatments into categories. If you offer multiple types of braces, you need one “Orthodontics” page plus boxes at the bottom for each individual type – Invisalign, etc.
The ideal Treatment page content layout:
All the required information must be on one page, so the user does not have to hunt around.
A “fly-out” is a tool we can install that lets the reader access the main menu from each treatment page, so they can easily navigate the website.
“Contact Us” form
This is key to converting patients. This form should appear on each treatment page. The form needs these elements:
Contact Us page
This important page should follow the same guidelines given above. Add a map, and telephone/address should be displayed prominently.
So, have I overwhelmed you with all this detail? Constructing an effective website definitely requires an eye for detail and knowledge of patient expectations.
I am happy to analyze your website and provide advice on how to strengthen it for optimal conversion.
What Exactly are Companies A/B Testing?
UK +44 (0) 203 745 5551
IRE +353 (0) 766 805 551
US +1 (650) 665-5551
SA +27 (0) 87 551 7851
Ideas House, Station Estate, London, E181 RT,
United Kingdom
Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions
Copyright Somnowell Marketing Ltd 2017