In this digital age, most people check online whenever they need medical services. That’s why many healthcare organizations have websites to make it easier for patients to find them. However, having a website alone does not guarantee that clients will find you online and become patrons of your practice. If your website is outdated or non-optimized, it could be doing your healthcare practice more harm than you may realize. If that’s the case, you need to improve your website.
One way to tell your medical practice website needs an upgrade is when it isn’t ranking for discovery keywords on Google. If your site doesn’t have a high rank for relevant keywords, it’s time for an upgrade. Also, you can assess your practice’s site using the Google Structured Data Testing Tool to know if Google can read and understand your site’s content and enable rich features for its pages in search results. Website analytics tools like Google Analytics can help you ascertain the effectiveness of your website. If users aren’t navigating past your homepage, it might be an indication that the design or content needs revising.
Your website is a showcase for your practice and one of the most important elements of your marketing strategy. Its content and design should reflect your reputation as a physician and tell a story about your expertise, empathy, and patient experience. If your medical practice website doesn’t do this, it needs an upgrade. You should also consider upgrading your website if it doesn’t display properly on a mobile phone, takes too much time to load, or hasn’t been updated for over one year. This guide will show you helpful tips for improving your medical practice website and solidifying your online presence.
Functionality
As technology advances, your site’s functionality may become outdated, making you lag behind the competition. That’s why you should assess your medical practice website’s functionality on smartphones and desktop computers. Look at its loading speed, navigational flaws, and other problems that may negatively impact your site’s performance. This assessment is crucial because users (potential clients) are not likely to stick around if your site takes more than 3 seconds to load. And Google penalizes slow-loading sites with lower search page ranking.
Your medical website shouldn’t be just for showcasing your address and working hours; users should be able to schedule appointments easily just by the click of a button. So, ensure that your site is equipped with such a feature. Also, for your patients to have autonomy over their healthcare, they should be able to create profiles on your site where they can view their medical records, prescriptions, and appointments.
Remember, some of your patients may not be native English speakers. So, consider using medical language services to help make medical records, patient guides, aftercare instructions, and brochures available in other languages. Since your website will likely contain sensitive patient data, ensure it is fully HIPAA compliant for your users to have safe browsing experiences.
Design
Your website’s design should enable your users to have an intuitive experience; it should be easy for them to navigate and find all they need. So, unclutter your pages by getting rid of irrelevant features. Ensure your core information (like your location, hours of operation, and contact information) are prominently displayed and that your headings are clear and meaningful. Examine your page’s visual stability to know if elements like images and buttons move around while loading. Users wouldn’t want to click on hyperlinks by mistake or have a hard time finding a feature.
Also, look at the images on your website and ask yourself whether they are modern, relevant, and appealing. If your site’s images or colors appear outdated, consider changing them. Generally, it’s best to use neutral images that can sustain long-term usage. They should evoke positive sentiments, be relevant to your medical practice, and have high quality.
Content
The content on your medical practice website should be relevant, informative, and compelling. Content quality matters because it is one of the criteria Google uses in ranking websites on the search page. Provide extensive information about your practice and the services you offer, and use different media like images, videos, podcasts, and infographics to engage and educate your users.
Add alt texts in your images so that visually impaired users can know what the images are about. Alt tags also allow search engines to better understand your site’s information, increasing your likelihood of a higher search engine result page (SERP) rank. You can include an educational content section that’s easy to understand and explores various aspects of your specialty. Review your website’s content for the accuracy of published information, punctuation, and spelling errors.
