In this day and age, maintaining a good website is crucial for a dental clinic’s success. However, many practices fall behind on the upkeep of their page, causing them to miss out on some unearned profits. It only takes users around 8 seconds to form an opinion about your practice based website. It is imperative that dentists stay on top of updating their website, making sure it attains long-term viewers (around 2-3 minutes in this case), and includes other basic principles that every website should contain.
Just because a dental clinic has a website, it definitely does not mean that it is beneficial or driving in any traffic. The site should reflect what a practice offers as well as their personality. People want to easily see services, address, and contact information so they can easily book an appointment.
Not sure of what to post or how much time to spend on the site? Getting your initial site setup should take the most time, next the main concern should be updating and maintaining. This is not time consuming and if someone knows what your clinic wants to post about, it can be easily done.
Are you able to track the ROI of your practice’s website? Your return on investment from your website is a key performance indicator on how effective your site is. One way to do this is by checking the amount of times your profile has been viewed, and what they do once they are inside your web page. This is valuable because it shows how easy (or hard) it is for would-be patients to use the information from the site.
Can you easily communicate through your website? Just having a website is not enough anymore, practices have to communicate effectively so that it is easy for any potential patient to access important information at any given time. This 24/7 communication opens the door to new patients that would be hard to reach without one.
Can you easily make changes to your site? You shouldn’t have to reach out to your website company to add simple items like blogs or bios, nor should you have to pay for simple changes. If you aren’t able to login to a site yourself, you need to consider switching to an easy to use platform.
Does your website keep up with the changes to the industry, both dental and internet marketing? Although a dental clinic might have had the best website in 2015, 2019 has quite different internet practices and trends that would make the 2015 website seem extremely out of date. First off, keeping up with the times will help with your ranking on a search page. Search engines regularly do updates and keep track of new and updated sites that deserve the top spots. Secondly, of course every practice wants to maintain a good image for their patients by presenting how they are flexible and compatible to change. Not only will it retain loyal patients, it will attract new ones with an eye for the contemporary practices they’re looking for.
Are you able to check Google Analytics to see how people are finding sites? Tracking a website over time can give a practice some vital information on how it has been performing. For example, you notice that after you have changed some features, you have retained less traffic or received fewer clicks on calls to action. In this case, the analytics are telling you that those changes may not have been the right decision, and that you need to rethink the approach. In a situation where you notice that your traffic has slowly been declining over time, that tells you that your website is probably out of date, and needs to be updated.
Does your website work on different devices? With the popularity of mobile devices, chances are a good amount of a businesses potential patients will be searching on their phone, especially in mobile-centric Australia. Because of this, making sure that a website is compatible with a computer, a tablet, and a mobile will help conversion rates. Users on their mobile won’t have to mess around with zooming in and out and attempting to access different parts of the web page. Instead, it’s already laid out for them to search through just as they would on a laptop.
According to Google’s “think insights” on mobile, if a user is frustrated with the formatting of a website, or doesn’t see the content they want immediately, there is a 61% chance that they will leave immediately. On the other hand, if they have a positive experience with a mobile site there is a 67% chance that they will buy the good or service presented. It will only prove productive for a practice to make sure their website is congruent with any device.
Practices need to maintain their website to make it easier for patients. Not only does the website have to be compatible across all platforms, but the site needs constant attention to keep up with competition and your patient’s needs.
If you’re looking for a free website audit or to learn more about how we can help your practice improve your online presence, please give us a call today!
