If you’re considering a new website or upgrading your existing site, a few key components can ensure success. Keep in mind, a website that would appeal to you may not be the perfect site for your target market. You know more about dentistry, and probably find it more interesting, than many of your potential patients. A website must be present the right text and components if seekers are to find it and invest time in exploring it. You’re an expert at creating smiles. For a great site, you need expert dental website developers. This tip list should help you when you’re shopping for a website development company…
- Get optimized
You’ve heard of SEO – it means search engine optimization, and it may sound as foreign to you as TMJ sounds to your new patients. SEO requires a unique strategy that incorporates many aspects of a website, from the words, word placement, and number of words on each page, to page titles, headlines, and technical, backend work that you’ll never see. A good website development company that offers SEO will also offer reporting features, so you can see how well – or how poorly – your site is working. Without SEO (or pay-per-click advertising), you will need to drive traffic to your website through distributing your website address. SEO brings patients to you. - Get a gallery
While driving potential new patients to your site is essential, once visitors are there, photos and words should capture their attention and give them reason to stay and look around – then, ultimately, to call you and book an appointment. One personalized way to show off your skills and wow web visitors is featuring a photo gallery of real patient cases. You should send quality, digital, before-and-after photos to your website development company so that they can create a unique and impressive photo gallery for you. - Be informative, but not too informative
People go to the Internet for information. Your site should feature easy-to-understand articles about the services, products, and materials you use. Stay away from the temptation to add details that would appeal to dentists. Dental jargon and specs on equipment will not impress, but only confuse your web visitors. - Accept a blend of marketing copy with your practice’s unique voice
Your site is a marketing tool, and as such, it should incorporate advertising strategies. Interesting headlines, appeal to the emotions, posing questions and giving answers – these things draw readers in and get them excited about your offerings. However, if all dental websites only focused on products and services, they would sound the same. What will set your website apart from others? Well, your gallery, for one. But also, by sprinkling little details about your staff, location, education, and experience throughout the copy, and by incorporating a tone that "sounds like" you and your team members, the text on your site will be different from others. Potential patients who are shopping around will see that you’re different…if not better! - Get downloadable or interactive patient forms
Make life a little easier for your team and your new patients by offering downloadable or interactive forms. Downloadable forms can be printed at the new patient’s home, completed, and brought to the first visit. Interactive forms can be completed online, held on a secure server, and downloaded by your office team. Online forms save time, which saves money, and they also make your practice appear modern and technically savvy. - Check your email or don’t include it with contact information
What if you left a message for your CPA and he never called back? When practices put an email address online, then don’t check the address daily, if not hourly, and respond, the practice is sending a few bad messages: they don’t care about responding, they don’t have it together, or they’re too busy for new patients. - Don’t sweat the small stuff, that’s their job
Just like your patients play a role in their oral health, you will have a part in creating your new site. How can your web developers create a site that’s uniquely yours, without your input? Keep in mind, when it comes to actually placing a crown, your patient trusts you. So should you trust your developer when it comes to getting your site published.
Your dental website development company should take the input and preferences you offer, then build a custom site that meets all of your objectives with SEO, appearance, copy, and being friendly for users. If you get hung up on wondering if everything is perfect, you could hinder your site’s success. A good web development company will allow you to submit changes to your site after it is published. A really good company won’t charge you for those edits, but instead will offer a service plan to cover all revisions. This means that you can add information about new services, employees, and certifications as your practice grows.
For more information about web design, visit TNT Dental online.