Your healthcare website design directly reflects who you are. Imagine a doctor, dentist, or physical therapist using complex treatments with cutting-edge technology.
And that 90% of patients who need these treatments go to Google to look for professionals who can serve them.
When entering the site, these patients have a bad experience, realizing that it is disfigured and confused on the cell phone. To make matters worse, it is outdated and has a visual identity from the last century. Want an even more disastrous scenario? A healthcare professional would even have a medical website design.
Your healthcare website should be the foundation of every Digital Marketing strategy
Many professionals, mainly in the health area, believe that with the arrival of social networks, it is no longer necessary to have a website of their own. It’s as if Facebook or Instagram could replace their Website.
Here’s a tip: Don’t get hung up on vanity metrics. I will show you why having your Website is essential for your digital marketing strategy.
Your Website is the first point of contact between your patient and you. In addition, a modern and well-structured medical website design, and above all, well updated, can signal to Google that you have invested significant time and attention, leading to the better positioning of your Website on search pages.
This is extremely important for anyone who wants to be found. As mentioned, 90% of patients search Google for their health problems and, consequently, for professionals who can solve them.
Many delude themselves into believing that the best place to interact and retain patients is healthcare social media marketing. However, the Website is the safest and most reliable channel for this. Patients feel more cared for and welcomed and not just one more in the crowd, as in social networks.
A good healthcare website design will give you a competitive edge over competitors who are not paying attention to your online reputation.
Through the site, you can show your knowledge and expertise in your specialty’s subjects, helping your patient’s decision-making process. Apart from that, a good design and Content Marketing will take the patient a message about your experience and knowledge.
Your Website in 2021 should mainly:
Communicate with your current patients:
There is no better marketing channel to communicate with your current and potential patients than those who visit your Website from your Blog and email, bringing education, advice, comfort, and answering questions about your health and treatments.
Give credibility:
Having a website will immediately improve your credibility as a professional. He can promote a strong impression of authority to new and existing clients and showcase his skills to better position his specialty. Think of it as one of your main tools to stand out from competitors.
Attract New Patients through healthcare website design:
Your healthcare website design will allow your patients to see your brand or specialty while learning about your treatments. In addition, having your Website available to new and existing clients allows you or your practice to be available 24 hours a day. This means inquiries/reservations can be made online, at any time of the day, for a very low cost.
Represent your personality as a professional:
A good website gives personality to your professional practice. Both new and existing patients want to feel that their services have their “personality” and that their place of care is welcoming.
Make your team more efficient:
A healthcare website design is also a fantastic tool for creating and improving internal efficiency. Elements like FAQs, form submissions, click-to-call functionality, live chat, and downloadable ebooks can help save time, money, and staff.
These tools allow patients to do everything online rather than calling the office. This means that you or your team can have more time to deal with other questions instead of answering the same question dozens of times every day.
Being mobile:
The importance of having a responsive website (mobile). You are probably reading this post on your mobile device.
Generally speaking, a mobile responsive website is a healthcare website designed to display properly on smaller screens, such as iPhone or Android smartphones or mid-sized iPads and tablets.
A responsive/mobile website must necessarily have:
– Larger and easier to read texts;
– User-friendly navigation for mobile devices;
– Touch-sensitive buttons and page elements;
– Faster download speed.
Contain Value-Adding Content:
Every healthcare professional or clinic website should offer valuable content for their patients to discover and engage with. An internal blog is the best way to publish this content. In addition to being excellent for your patient, valuable content shows Google that you care about them and deserve to be featured on the search page.
Helping the patient in their decision-making process:
It is not uncommon to find patients distressed about their healthcare by searching Google for symptoms and then, for their treatments, often surgical. It is up to you to demystify and advise, even if indirectly, the treatment options. In addition to educating and reassuring him, you gain authority and trust.
Be faster than your competitors:
One of the most important factors for a website nowadays is its loading speed, mainly for two reasons:
- People increasingly use smartphones and tablets to access websites and don’t have the patience to wait more than five seconds. Otherwise, navigate to another site.
- Speed is one of the most important criteria for SEO (abbreviation in English for “Search Engine Optimization”), which is more than taking advantage of being faster and appearing better positioned in Google searches.
Main Marketing tools/strategies to use on your Website:
Reviews:
For 9 out of 10 users, an online review is just as important as a personal recommendation. Patients are 30% more likely to consult after seeing positive reviews about a healthcare professional.
Around 70% say that positive comments make them trust a healthcare professional more.
Reliability (30%), expertise (22%), and professionalism 20%) are the most important reputation traits for local healthcare professionals.
Videos:
You may have heard the phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words,” now, let’s take it to the next level: A minute is worth 1.8 million words. More than 46% of people who watch video content on a website take action after seeing it.
SEO:
These three letters symbolize what is now considered the “Holy Grail” of the web. But many people do not understand this. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) affects the visibility of a website or webpage in the unpaid results of a search engine such as Google.
Medical SEO services use the combination of keywords, images, links, and social media activities to drive traffic to your Website, with the goal of ranking as high as possible in Google results.
Google Ads:
Most people search for healthcare professionals through Google.
The fastest way to reach the top of searches and get a potential patient to find you is through Google ads.
You choose the keywords your customer will search for, and your ad is shown to them.
The system is prepaid, and you only pay when they click on your ad.
To be effective, you must link your ad to your Website and not social networks.
Blog:
It is impossible to have a robust online presence without having a blog. The Blog directly impacts medical SEO services, improving its position in search engines like Google. Moreover, a well-written blog post is valuable because it can continue generating traffic, leads, and conversions long after posting, boosting your reputation exponentially.
Landing Pages (LPs):
Landing Pages or landing pages, in the case of the healthcare area, are pages designed to convert a lead (potential patient) into a patient.
It should be focused on a single service or product and minimize user distraction to achieve your goal.
One of the most frequently made mistakes is to create an ad on Facebook Ads or Google Ads, and when a lead (patient potential) clicks, send them to the first page of your Website. When this is done, conversion rates are significantly lower than for ads that lead to a specific Landing Page for that keyword.
Therefore, for the ad to perform well, it needs a specific Landing Page.
Ex: if you advertise on Google Ads as a spine specialist, your Landing Page must have its content restricted to only topics about spine treatments.
FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions):
Tools such as FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) can help the patient with information about your services and care and save time for you and your team. Imagine yourself answering patients’ questions, one by one.
Contact/information forms:
The forms are necessary so customers can get in touch, mainly by leaving their email and phone numbers in their database. From this database, you will be able to send email marketing campaigns, Whatsapp, and other means, to nurture and engage with your leads.
Call to Action (CTA):
The Call to Action or “Call to Action” is the opportunity to motivate your audience to take real steps to become aa new patient
It can be the determining factor between a lead and a conversion. Many would argue that the CTA is the most important part of your Website or advertising campaign.
Content Marketing: Content
Marketing is the strategy of creating valuable content for your target audience. It can be in the form of text, video, or audio. It is this specialized content that brings quality traffic to your Website.
The higher the quality of the content, the more valuable it is to your audience and the more likely they are to engage with your healthcare services.
The more your audience spends time on your Website, the more likely they will develop trust in your brand and become patient.
Ebooks:
After attracting them, you will capture their data such as name, email, and phone number and use them in specific marketing campaigns creating a funnel, in which I will make an entire post soon.
An ebook is a great way to attract targeted leads that can eventually convert into patients.
Mobile Marketing:
Mobile Marketing is a multichannel digital marketing strategy that aims to reach a particular target audience via websites on their smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices applications, and text messages. Email, SMS, Whatsapp, Telegram, and Social Networks, among others.
Recently, customers have shifted their attention and do everything on their cell phones. Therefore, it the importance to create a real engagement with this audience in the mobile environment.
All to reach your audience in the environment they feel most comfortable in.
Social media integration:
Integrating your Website with social media gives your audience more ways to engage and interact with you or your brand.
The goal is a two-way street:
- Direct your audience from social networks to your Website;
- Allow your social media accounts to be easily accessed through your Website.
I hope with this post and I have clarified some doubts that you may have.
I know it’s a lot of information, and I won’t hesitate to answer any questions if you have them.
