This article originally appeared in the August/2016 issue of the Academy of General Dentistry’s AGD Impact magazine.
An Effective Practice Website Is Key to Marketing Success
Dentistry is a highly competitive field. Modern dentists are making significant investments in technology and staff to differentiate themselves from their peers. Although your practice reflects your commitment to provide your patients with the best possible dental experience, another investment could be just as important to the future financial health and prosperity of your business — your practice’s website.
More than one-third of your potential patients judge you based on the quality of your website, according to Futuredontics, the parent company of 1-800-DENTIST. First impressions can last forever, and they can determine whether or not a prospective patient decides to visit your practice or someone else’s. So how does your website really look? There are key elements that every website should have to assure both its effectiveness and ease of use.
Selecting the Right Website Platform
There are a multitude of platforms available to create a website, and their effectiveness can vary greatly. There is the “doc-in-the-box,” or prepackaged solutions. These sites offer a menu of pre-categorized content, including images and features, to choose from. However, they are based entirely on their perception (not yours) of your professional needs as a dentist. The copy is pre-written and not customized for your practice, and they usually feature stock photography.
These prepackaged solutions appear to be easy and cost-effective options, but unfortunately, they lack originality and can have a noticeably negative impact on your internet marketing strategy, minimizing its effectiveness. Search engines such as Google and Bing want to see original, easy-to-understand copy on your website, which helps improve your ranking in search results, and this “Doc-in-the-Box” option does not offer that.
If you are tech savvy, there are always do-it-yourself options. Multiple website building solutions allow you to easily plug in information and images into predesigned templates. Examples of these include Wix and GoDaddy website builder solutions. This do-it-yourself option is also cost-effective; however, building the actual site can be time-consuming, and they are usually not search engine optimization (SEO)-friendly.
WordPress is one publishing platform that is a viable option if you are building your own website. It gives you the ability to choose from an abundance of add-ons and themes to customize your website in a way that meets your specific needs. Without any required program knowledge, it also allows you to easily update your own website.
Whatever your final choice, you have to be sure the platform you use allows you to create a site that meets the needs of your practice, helps convert your visitors into patients, and gives you a solid foundation upon which to build your marketing activities. It also needs to be user-friendly and responsive on all devices (such as a desktop, laptop, tablet, and smartphone). Websites that are nonresponsive, or not mobile friendly, will appear lower in search results. In early 2015, Google updated its search algorithm so that comparable mobile sites would rank higher than non-mobile friendly sites in mobile search results. This updated algorithm pushed all nonresponsive websites to the bottom of the search rankings.) According to Search Engine Land’s “Local Consumer Review Survey (2012),” 85 percent of consumers use the internet to search for local businesses, and more than 60 percent of internet searches are done from a smartphone, according to Futuredontics. Not having a mobile-friendly website would be a waste of resources for your practice.
Attracting Prospective Patients with the Right Content
Content is one of the most important elements, if not the most important element, of your website — everything from the words on each page to the visuals you decide to use. Like the writer who has a sentence or a paragraph to get and keep his or her readers’ attention, you will have mere seconds to stimulate a website visitor.
To be effective, the copy on your website must not only be fresh, interesting, and well-written, but also pertinent and beneficial to your website visitors. Why should they choose you as their dentist? Your website should clearly answer this question.
Although imitation is said to be the sincerest form of flattery, on the internet, it can lead to redundancy and result in lost interest among your website visitors and potential patients. Google is the largest and most widely used search engine in the world. It can recognize “canned content” — content that is generic or not written specifically for your practice — in an instant, deemphasizing or eliminating the site from search results and penalizing any organic targeted search for your dental services. If you are publishing content that is duplicated on hundreds, if not thousands, of other dental practice websites, you hurt your chances of prospective patients finding you. (These websites are also vying for the same dental-related traffic. There are more than 25,000 searches for dentists in Tampa, Florida, alone — imagine how many are searching in your area!)
Original dental website content that is updated often and search engine optimized will help your website stand out from your competition.
Enhancing the Esthetics of Your Website
Esthetics are another “make or break” aspect of your website. Don’t overlook it. Use eye-catching and aesthetically pleasing colors and images to catch your visitors’ attention. Take the time to personalize your site, injecting into it your personality and that of your staff.
Your website is the outlet that should showcase how fun, friendly, cutting-edge, and welcoming your practice is and what your new patients can expect upon their first visit to your office. Patients want to see the real you. Use real images of your practice instead of stock photos. Tell those special, endearing stories of your patients’ successes.
Highlight information about the technologies your practice uses that will make a dental experience more enjoyable. Do you have an intraoral scanner that reduces time in the chair, eliminating the old “gunky”-tasting impression material? Tell prospective patients about it in simple, easy-to-understand language. Do you offer weekend or evening appointments? Let them know! Why are you different from your competitors? This is the ideal forum to show that difference. Put your best dental foot forward. Be creative.
Since we live in a social society, take advantage of it. Be sure that you have links to your social media accounts (such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) that you are active on and that your patients are likely to frequent. If you don’t stay relevant and meet them where they are, you can be sure that your competition will.
In today’s digitally evolving world, having an effective website is the first step to building a strong online presence. Your website should be the foundation of your marketing — one of your most economically feasible and effective tools to spread the word about your practice. Yet, it shouldn’t be by chance. Take the time to regularly assess the effectiveness of your site. If you don’t have one, make it your top priority. When potential patients are looking for you online, they need to be able to find exactly what you want them to see.
7 Things Your Dental Practice Website Must Have in 2016
- Responsive web design
- Clear and easy-to-understand page navigation
- Real images of you, your staff, and the office environment
- An easy-to-find call to action on the homepage, such as an appointment-request button or any new patient offers
- Links to your practice’s social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram)
- Staff and doctor head shots with brief biographies
- Contact web page with your office’s phone number and address, as well as an inquiry form
