Gain more leads through your website.
There are three key components to dental practice success.
- Building an excellent practice
- Drawing people into your practice
- Keeping them at your practice
Today we’re going to focus on that second aspect, which is drawing your clients in, and how to do so through website credibility.
Patients and potential patients are increasingly becoming tech savvy. This means that one of the ways you should be attracting new patients is on an online platform. While you can utilize social media to your advantage to draw your potential clients’ interests, it’s also important to have a professional website.
The Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility is your guide to creating a dental website that facilitates great user experience.
1. Website design speaks first, and it speaks volumes.
You know the common saying, “Never judge a book by its cover?” Well, we all do, and this applies to websites as well. In fact, the first thing consumers notice about your website is its design.
If your design doesn’t speak of professionalism and quality, what does that tell the customer about your business?
Welcome your customers with an uncluttered, easy to understand website layout. Choose color schemes that aesthetically blend. Pay attention to typography. Supplement visual attraction with high-quality photos and videos. When it comes to crafting a design, less is more. Create your website design to be visually appealing but not overstimulating, and keep your design consistent.
Immediately upon scanning your site, your consumers are subconsciously making decisions about how trustworthy the content is and whether they want to explore what you have to offer or not.
2. Provide the information your audience needs.
Now that you have the attention of consumers, your website needs to include everything your consumers want to have access to.
- Easy to access contact us/schedule an appointment page
- Information about the practice—goals, mission
- Information about yourself, as a dentist, and the whole team
- Information about the services, especially services that make your practice stand out, such as specialty dental services like orthodontics
- An engaging, informative blog, if you have one
- Location—physical address with link to maps, directions
- Links to google reviews
3. Now make that information easy to navigate.
The information is there, and it needs to be easy to find. The menu is the first place your audience will go, and it needs to be simple to navigate. If you have drop-down menus, consider keeping the number of options to select from a minimum.
Is your website mobile friendly? Consider that most people are going to be using their smartphones to search for dentists and dental specialists.
Get rid of any pop-up ads and other annoying interrupters. This ties back into helping your customers easily access what they need. Pop up ads are not only distracting, but they can also cover content and confuse your audience as to what exactly you’re promoting.
You have what you need—an understandable website, adequate information, and clear navigation. Now how can you make the information easy to absorb?
4. You need well-written site pages.
Your site pages show your consumers what you do and what you have to offer. This is the home of your website.
You need a page for everything your practice offers. In addition to having several main pages—one for general dentistry, one for cosmetic dentistry, and so forth, consider where your greatest expertise lies. For example, if you offer custom mouth guards to treat snoring and sleep apnea, and this is a very important part of your practice, it might have its own page. If you offer straight wire braces for class 1 and class 2 malocclusion, highlight that on a page specifically for orthodontics. Include “learn more” buttons that give your audience easy access to a contact page.
Who are you as a practice and what makes you stand out? Create an “About” page where your audience can learn some facts about you and your team members. Include photos and a few personable pieces of information, such as what you enjoy doing in your spare time, or even short video clips where you explain your mission. Information about yourself and your team builds trust.
You can also feature patient testimonials. This could include quotes from happy patients, links to google reviews, and so forth.
5. Quality content is crucial.
We talked about the site pages as being the home to your website. You can also consider writing a dental blog. A blog is an excellent opportunity to engage with your audience through fresh, consistent content.
Well written content is defined by several key characteristics. First, it offers the readers something they can benefit from. It needs to be engaging, relatable, personable, and the audience has to be able to connect with it. You need to be giving your audience more than what they would be able to find somewhere else, and it has to be unique.
Through your blogs, you can showcase what makes your practice stand out. Write more detailed posts about each offering for those people who want to know more.
In addition to this, your content should be fresh and frequently updated. Post consistently.
6. Use keywords and provide credible outsource links.
Take use of the fact that there are trillions of google searches each year. Use commonly used phrases as keywords in your content. This will help attract people to your website when they search up questions they have on google.
Backlinks are your friend. You can demonstrate the authenticity of your site through them. You should be citing reliable sources, such as the ADA, the NIH, and mouthhealthy.org in the content you offer on your site.
To avoid citing sources that are taken down, monitor your website on a regular basis and remove links from sources that are outdated, missing, or no longer credible.
Just as we are discussing here what factors give a website authority, the same follows for any site that you link to. The more credible the websites are that you are linking to, the more trustworthy your website becomes.
Your Website showcases your practice. What do you have to offer?
Maybe your practice has a wonderful, empathetic, friendly and outgoing team. Perhaps you take pride in listening to your patients and giving them a voice in their treatment. Maybe you have taken great strides to further your education in a specific area, and you have multiple credentials. And maybe you offer high-end services, such as orthodontics. Your website gives you the chance to educate your patients on everything you can do for them. It’s a great opportunity to attract the type of cases in your office you are most excited about treating.
