Just like physicians, web developers have their own specialized jargon, including terms like responsive design, search engine optimization (SEO), hypertext markup language (HTML), cascading style sheets (CSS), JavaScript
Before going into terminology, let’s start with what kind of person or company to hire. Your first instinct may be to hire a web developer because you want a website built. This is partially correct. A web developer who understands the technical details of website creation is certainly needed, but you also need someone with online marketing experience. In today’s digital world, your website needs to be the hub of the marketing strategy for your practice as well as a means of interacting with your patients. Engaging a marketing specialist in website development will help ensure you get a website that helps attract new patients, retains existing patients, builds your brand, and engages patients when they are not in the office.
Whenever possible, choose a web design firm experienced in working with health care organizations. Health care organization are a different type of businesses with a primary function of caring for people in a business sector that is among the most regulated. A web design firm that understands the type of messaging and regulatory considerations needed for a medical practice is more likely to build the best possible website for your business.
In your first meeting with a web designer, it is important to explain your goals for the website, the message you want to convey, and what you and your practice stand for—your brand. Having a clear message for your website lays a foundation for the entire process.
Foundational Website Components
About Us
Potential patients want to know about your practice – your story, your history, and what makes you the right fit for them. Include relevant information about what makes you truly unique, your experience, and why patients should trust you, above all the other choices they have available. Include awards you or your practice has won, news articles, and other pertinent information (eg, how you benefit your community).
Services
In today’s information-overloaded society, a clear explanation of exactly you offer will help bring you new patients. No one wants to waste their precious time digging through a website or having to call just to find out what services you do/don’t offer. Make it easy for people to find and understand exactly what you offer. List your services and procedures and give a concise but detailed explanation (or video) for each. Use images and graphics to help explain things more clearly. Create your own descriptions rather than using third-party (someone else’s) content.
Physician Directory
Potential patients want to know who their physicians are. Make it easy to find and search for specific physicians with specific characteristics (eg, gender, languages spoken, services offered) if you have a larger practice. Invest in professional photos and provide details about all the physicians, including the schools they attended, what residences they did, their areas of specialization, awards, community involvement, and links to their social media accounts.
Location(s)/Directions
List all your practice locations with all the necessary information a patient would need to know to find you (eg, address, phone number, hours of operation, and directions.) Include a Google Map, images of your building, parking information, and any possible road construction in your area.
Educational Content
Creating content is one of the best ways to increase your visibility and rankings in Google searches. It is also a great way to engage potential and current patients who will search about their health conditions, treatment options, possible procedures, and other topics. Articles or videos of your doctors clearly providing information and educating patients on specific topics are great ways to share and present your content. Your content can also be leveraged and shared by others and on social media to increase more awareness and visibility.
Testimonials
When’s the last time you made a significant purchase without reading reviews and ratings of the product? Considering the importance of health care, it is not surprising that people use the same approach when searching for a new physician. No one wants to make a bad decision in any aspect of their life–especially healthcare. We all want to have some feedback before we decide about something that important. Include testimonials from your current satisfied patients on your home page or even build a separate section or page devoted to testimonials.
Key Questions for the Developers
How much will it cost?
Be sure to obtain not only the costs for website creation, but also for website hosting and ongoing maintenance. Regular maintenance is important not only to make sure all the information is up to date but also to ensure all security protection needed is maintained and up to date. Make sure your web development firm can support your website after it is launched.
What are the security and backup approaches?
As with the computers and network in your practice, your website needs protection. Ensure your website provider includes a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate for your website. An SSL certificate is a digital certificate that authenticates website identity and encrypts information sent to the server where it is hosted, using SSL technology that helps protect it (and you) from hackers. A website that has SSL will begin with https:// and have a lock symbol by the website link (URL) in your browser. Make sure your website developer uses antivirus and antimalware software for your website and has a regularly scheduled backup protocol for your website. The last thing you want is to have your practice website taken over by hackers, hurt your business operations and your brand.
How will people find my website?
Just because you built a website doesn’t mean people will be able to find it, which means they will not to be able to find out about your practice. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website so that it appears near the top of relevant search results (how often do you look at page 2 of what Google returns when you search for something, after all?) Certain changes to your website design and content make your website more attractive to a search engine. A good SEO implementation will help display your website as a top result on the search engine results page. This is especially important for growing practices that need to attract new patients.
Will my website look good on a phone or tablet?
Web developers use the term responsive design to describe websites that adapt how they appear to the size of the device screen being used. Responsive design makes your website easy to read on a mobile device, which may simply mean resizing content or creating a drastically different appearance with simplified content and mobile-friendly navigation.
A mobile-friendly website is important for medical practices because so many people use their mobile phones or tablets to search for a new physician or health care information. Maintaining both the desktop and mobile versions of your website are key for your marketing strategy.
We hope this information will help you find and effectively engage a website development firm to build you a great website for your practice.
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