In the online world, the website is your mirror, reflecting what you are or what you wish to be. It is also arguably the most important inbound marketing asset for your medical practice. Your website sounds out your credibility and quality of services that you provide to new patients visiting it and helps them to make a decision of whether or not to consult with you. However, not everyone is an expert in creating websites that check all the boxes required to turn a potential patient into one sitting across a table or phone, consulting with you. There could be several website content and design issues that come in the way. At https://www.icareheal.com/ , we understand this more than anyone else and hence thought that it would be a good idea to share our insights about problems commonly made by doctors or their web agencies in creating their websites and how to avoid them.
An ill-designed and unprofessional website:
It’s important that your website looks beautiful and attractive if you wish to attract patients, because that’s the way the trust factor increases amongst the potential patients. A professional looking website creates that belief in patients that the doctor would be professional and able. The visitor landing on your website would give only a few seconds to skim through the information that you have provided about yourself, your services and your clinic before moving to the next. And that’s where a well designed website will hold the visitor’s attention and lead to better conversion. So, how to encourage them to do this. We enumerate below to be done:
- Clear and concise introduction about yourself. If you are experienced, are sought after by hospitals and patients alike, there is no harm in humbly showcasing it to your website visitors.
- Show detailed information about the specialties and services that you provide. Using aesthetic pictures and graphics help a lot in getting the message across.
- Add real case studies and testimonials from your patients. There is nothing more heartening for a visitor to note that several of your patients have benefited and have good things to say about you. It is not possible that 100 percent of your patients are satisfied but affirmation from a large majority prevails upon one or two who might not be that enthused.
- Use clear call-to-action (CTA) buttons that help patient easily understand how to book a consultation or an appointment with you from your website. It should also make your available slots available to patients to choose from.
- Avoid distracting the visitors by any element that takes them away from the journey that they need to cover on your website to turn into a successful acquisition/consultation.
Poor Loading Speed:
Poor loading speed of the website immediately wanes the interest of the visitor. No matter how much effort has been put into the design, content and organisation of the website, it will all be meaningless to your visitor if the web pages take forever to load. Some common reasons for poor loading speed are cheap web hosting, bloated code and non-optimized images, unnecessary plugins and scripts. Most of the web searches today happen on smartphones. You can put a significant amount of effort into having a page with quality content and a unique design – but if it does not load, no one will have the chance to see it. This is true on the smartphone where a visitor’s patience tends to be shorter. To best compete, medical companies have to ensure that they have the right web hosting and server support to be easily accessed – anytime and anywhere.
Not updating information:
One of the gravest mistakes doctors make is to think that once a website has been created, there is nothing more that you could or should do. The fact is, keeping the website updated for information which changes overtime goes a long way in building trust amongst the visitors. Any latest certification gained, any panel discussion that you were part of, new testimonials and other information related to your specialty or the enhanced services and equipment in your clinic, if updated regularly on the website, tremendously increases the trust amongst the visitors.
Not having a linked patient app or portal:
Many patients are not that alert in managing their health data. Patients that have taken your consultation hope that all their health data will be smoothly accessible to them somehow. They would either wish to see a patient portal where the data is available or still better, if they have their own app where data generated by you, like prescription, automatically gets saved for their reference. Not having such a facility can have enormous consequences and may cost you in the long term.
Not having secure payment capability:
If your patients are booking consultation with you online, it’s important that you give them a secure payment gateway for making payment of your fees. Also give them option to pay via net banking, debit/credit card, UPI and so on. A websites lacking secure certificate and a dedicated payment gateway could spell trouble in converting potential leads. Besides, secure certified website and safe payment gateway, the patients should be able to have secure communication with their physicians in the form of safe and secure video and call consultations.
Not Embracing Search Engine Optimization:
Websites that are not Search Engine Optimised would not show up in Search Engine results. The content available on the website, is effectively meaningless if no one is able to find it in the first place. Because of this, ensure that your website design is SEO friendly by using elements such as keywords, meta descriptions, and page titles. Apart from that, SEO is about improving your online location.
Keep the above points in mind when you are going for your new website or revamping your existing website. Better still you can consult website building experts who can help you out in combining all the elements together that help build websites that are aesthetically appealing and SEO optimised to generate a lot of visitor flows and increase traction amongst your patients. icareheal is in the forefront of helping doctors carve out their unique digital footprint and changing healthcare paradigms. Visit https://www.icareheal.com/ and watch https://youtu.be/msiNCo6_qQo for better understanding of how we do it.
