Healthcare related queries account for over 7% of organic searches on Google, accounting for over 1 billion searches a day. This means that the modern patient journey no longer begins in your waiting room–it begins on your website.
Today’s patients demand a smooth and seamless website experience across devices and platforms–from iPhones to desktops. So whether you’re running a large hospital chain or a private sports medicine practice, your healthcare organization needs a functional, easy to use website that builds trust.
Today’s patients are looking for an experience that answers questions and provides information. Knowing what success means for a medical website can help you convert strangers into patients.
How Can My Website Build Visibility?
Patients can’t go to your website unless they know it exists. A successful website will be visible to patients in a wide variety of areas–typically, in those areas where patients are already active. There are several effective and scalable ways you can meet patients where they are and increase the visibility of your website:
- Search Engine Optimization: Modern search engine optimization (or SEO) strategies are designed to help your website move up the Google rankings in a sustainable way. Leveraging high quality content that patients find useful can help index your website and promote organic growth.
- Content Creation: The more content you create, the more opportunities you have to build visibility. Your medical website should strive to provide answers to common patient questions and become a trusted authority in your area of healthcare. Content can include blog posts, video, social media posts, and more.
Accessibility: Remember that visibility is broadly defined, so ensuring your website is ADA compliant can help make your presence visible to more people, including those with disabilities.
How Can My Website Instill a Sense of Trust?
Knowing what patients expect your website to look like can be a serious advantage, and it’s particularly important for healthcare organizations. Branding that appears either too corporate or too splashy can leave patients feeling cold. Likewise, a design that looks dated or, worse, broken can cause patients to lose trust in your clinic or practice.
Successfully updating your medical website will usually begin with an audit of your current web presence to ensure that your brand identity is effectively communicated. A well designed medical website can instill trust by:
- Emphasizing the compassionate and medical nature of your practice via effective branding choices.
- Articulating the credentials, qualifications, and expertise of your medical staff, such as physicians.
- Working properly, easily and quickly (this includes your patient portal and connected scheduling apps).
The design of your website can influence a great deal of patient interactions. Finding the optimal color for your buttons, for example, could help improve click through rates.
How Does My Web Presence Answer the “Why Choose Us” Question?
When you have a conversation about what should be on my medical website, it’s important to consider the current healthcare landscape. In many places, patients have a wide variety of healthcare options, so they’re able to be selective.
For healthcare organizations, then, a successful website will be one that makes a convincing “why choose us” proposition. There are several ways your website can do this:
- Feature organic reviews: There was a time when online reviews were a nice little bonus. But these days, generating and managing patient reviews is critical to organic patient growth. 77% of patients won’t even book an appointment without looking at online reviews first.
- Showcase your expertise: Every healthcare organization is going to have their particular area of expertise. Highlighting that expertise can help patients feel comfortable and cared for at your clinic or facility. Patients want to know they’re getting the best possible care. Showing off your best credentials can help patients know why they want to choose your clinic.
Feature testimonials: Patient testimonials can be a powerful way to showcase your success stories. Let your patients speak for themselves! Written testimonials can be effective, but video testimonials can really help communicate directly to patients why they should choose your clinic or facility.
How Can You Get Patients to Convert?
What success means for a medical website often comes down to one simple metric: conversions. These days, it seems like there are all kinds of tricks that purport to increase conversions. How do you know what works and what will just alienate possible patients? Should you use popups, virtual chatbots, and other such tools? Well, it depends on what patients want to see your website look like.
Tools that can dependably increase conversions include:
- Popups: These tools can admittedly be a little tricky. But when done right (and when popups are helpful rather than annoying), these features become powerful conversion tools.
- Downloadable resources: Offering patients free resources can give patients a reason to click on your website repeatedly, build trust, and help convert website visits into office visits.
- Easy to use contact forms: Your forms need to be easy to fill out and send. Hidden roadblocks within your contact forms can stop patients in their tracks. Make it easy to contact your offices. Email and phone numbers should be very visible and easy to click, on both desktop and especially on mobile devices.
A Great Beginning to the Patient Journey
Today’s websites are a lot like yesterday’s store fronts: they must be inviting and thoughtfully created. A great website will make patients feel safe and secure in every click and reassured by the entirety of the experience.
To find out more about medical website design, or how to upgrade your current medical website, contact PatientX to schedule a conversation.