Wants Versus Needs for Medical Website Design

Designing your medical website is about much more than design, or in simple terms, how pleasing your site is to look at.  Sure, you might be “redesigning” your site, but web design is a broad term that includes much more than pure aesthetics.  It’s easy for all of us to get caught up in the “wow” factor of our website, but at the end of the day, you need to remember what you want isn’t always what you need to meet your goals.

It’s like any car – it might look beautiful on the outside but if you open the hood and see a rusted out engine that sounds like a dying animal when you turn it on, you know you aren’t getting the best. A beautiful medical website is great but if your visitors can’t even find your site in their search, you’ve lost them before you ever even had them.

So before you spend a fat budget on your website design or redesign, here are some things to consider about what you might want for your medical website versus what you need:

Your Medical Website Design Is About MUCH More Than Design

A flashy call to action, graphics that move, and engaging colors are all very important in the design of your medical website.  However, the infrastructure that provides for those design elements is equally as important as how those elements are implemented on the page.  So before you begin your website design for your facility or medical organization, make sure that your design team first considers what is happening behind the scenes of your site.

You Can’t Increase Patient Acquisitions If Your Site Is Nowhere To Be Found

What good is the most beautiful, well-designed medical website if your patients or potential patients can’t find you?  Considering search engine optimization (SEO) in the initial stages of your medical website design will save your entire team time and money in the end.  This encompasses such things as:

• A sitemap outlining what web pages your site will have
• The structure of each individual page
• The meta descriptions on each page
• The URL structure
• Keywords
• 301 redirects
• Including analytics on your updated site

10 SEO MISTAKES FOR MEDICAL MARKETERS TO AVOID DURING A WEBSITE REDESIGN

With all of the moving pieces that go into a healthcare website redesign, it’s easy to overlook SEO best practices, HIPPA, and healthcare compliance. Read the ten common SEO mistakes that you should avoid.
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The World’s Gone Mobile So Your Site Should Be As Well

How often do your visitors find your site using a mobile device? OFTEN!  The trend of mobile users is now exceeding desktop users so your website must cater to this audience. There are so many considerations to be made when designing a site for mobile but at the end of the day, responsive website design is the best option for your medical website.  From the beginning of your website design, you should consider how your site will translate to the mobile design so your site remains user-friendly.

The Ultimate Measure Of Success

So you know you need a new website but do you really know why or what purpose it will serve for your practice or medical organization?  The very first question you must establish before you even begin to have a conversation about a new website is,

“What are my goals for this new site?”

Or maybe you could ask,

“What do I want this website to do for my practice or medical organization?”

Ask yourself these questions:

• Is my website informational only?
• Do I want to convert visitors into patients/leads?
• What types of potential patients/customers will find me over the competition?
• Should current patients be able to register online?
• How many new patients/leads do I want to acquire through my website each year?
• Will I have a resource library? What will it include?  Is it relevant content to my audience?
• What do my potential patients/customers really want to know from me?

A successful medical website must be thought through carefully and planned strategically.  Needs must outweigh wants if you want your site to accomplish the goals you’ve set.  Don’t update your website just to do it – plan it, strategize it, design it, build it, launch it then measure your results