Category: Medical Website Design

Websites for Doctors – How A Website Can Help Your Medical Practice

Anyone in the medical profession knows how hectic their job and profession can get. Patients can get a little impatient sometimes, and down time can easily become scarce.  Whether you have your own practice or not, have a website for a medical practice can be a huge benefit if you know how to use it.

1. A Custom Medical Website Can Make Patients’ Lives Easier

It’s not something you would typically think about but having a physician website could take a huge weight off your shoulders when it comes to pleasing your patients.  By having a website or your medical practice, you can post trusted content and answer common patient questions. Instead of having to contact your office directly, your site can be a resource for them to get information directly FROM YOU without having to leave their house or wait for a response.

2. A Medical Website Can Make Your Life Easier

As a doctor, patients are your number one priority, and dealing with them comprises most of your work day. If you can get your website up and start posting updates regularly (you can also use social media), you will be able to reach more patients in less time – that means freeing up valuable hours in the day.  Your website can take on a lot of the grunt-work, especially with marketing, for you so that you have time to get to more patients.

3. Your Website Can Become a Healthcare Resource

The internet has become a valuable resource for people searching for healthcare related information, which means your website services do not have to be restricted to your personal patients.  You can optimize your website so that it pops up on search engines like Google and Bing (which go through millions of searches every MONTH).  If you can get your site ranked on one of these search engines, you will be able to not only bring in more patients, but you will also be able to become a public health resource that people can go to for medical information.

This can be especially true if you have a blog on your website. A blog can let you comment on any healthcare related news or discoveries.

4. A Website for Your Practice Can Only Help

In the long run, websites don’t cost very much to maintain and can offer an entire range of services that would otherwise be unused. For someone in the medical field, it can greatly streamline the day-to-day process when used properly. The internet is a very big place, and technology has provided us with something that no one in history has ever had. It makes sense to use to use it to your advantage instead of letting it go to waste. Having a medical website can take a lot of time off your hands and improve the lives of patients as well as providing a variety of benefits for your medical practice.  If you are smart about it, you can get a lot of bang for your buck than you might expect.

Doctor Websites Making a Great First Impression

The best medical website design strategies accomplish several things, but they all start with a great first impression. In order to keep visitors around long enough to provide them with information, interact in your community, and finally, to take further action (make an appointment), your healthcare site must make a strong first impression. If you do not hook visitors in the first few seconds of their visit, you will have lost them forever.

first-impressionHow do you make a great first impression when you are competing with dozens of other healthcare providers and doctor websites? It takes some work and includes a combination of efforts. Obviously, your site must look great. It must provide visitors with a sense of organization and be visually appealing. This includes having and easy to use navigation, call-to-action, and easy to understand messaging. You should also provide a value proposition or reason that someone should contact you for their medical needs. Some examples:

Let visitors know-

  1. how long you have been serving the community
  2. about any special training or board-certifications
  3. educational background

Communicating Value

In addition to a great looking website, you must also communicate your value immediately. This can be tough because most websites for doctors use various content offerings to accomplish this. A three page report on the benefits of your services is not likely to hook someone in just a few seconds. Instead, you must provide a synopsis of your value. Make a bold promise that catches a visitor’s attention as soon as they land on your site. You must then deliver on your promise, but first you must create intrigue and gain interest.

Branding Your Message

The best doctor website design strategies also utilize strong branding. The more recognizable your brand the more likely visitors are to trust you. Building a brand is about more than just choosing a great logo or catchphrase, though these things can be very effective tools for branding. Social media for your medical practice helps your branding efforts because it establishes a reputation before visitors even make it to your site. If you create a sense of curiosity before a person clicks on your site, visitors are more likely to stick around once they arrive.

Welcome Website Visitors and Patients

Finally, consider all of the ways you would make a great first impression offline. When a new patient visits your office, you likely take strides to help them feel comfortable. The same should occur on your website. The better someone feels navigating your website, the more likely they are to schedule an appointment.

Create an organized website for your practice that looks and feels friendly, professional, and appealing. If a visitor arrives at a site that is cluttered or disorganized with images and words, they are unlikely to stick around to navigate through the confusion. It is not your patient’s responsibility to make sense of the information you provide.

If you are dumping massive amounts of information into someone’s lap, they will likely shut down and be unresponsive to your message. Instead, you should offer information in a way that educates gently and is to the point. From the very first few seconds someone visits your website, make sure they can clearly understand your message. The message should include why your medical expertise is the best in the area and why they should go ahead and call to schedule an appointment.

The best websites for doctors start with the very first impression. With a little effort, you can have an informative and effective site that helps you establish an online presence – and attract new patients.

Tips on Having an Effective Physician Website

Website design for your medical practice can sometimes seem very tedious but by choosing the right web design company, it can be a creative and financially rewarding experience. It is not a coincidence that the most popular and widely used medical, information, and e-commerce web sites share similar characteristics – they are all concise, well-planned, and easy to navigate.

One of the key concepts to remember while planning a doctor website design is usability. The term usability refers to the ease at which a user can navigate and use a website. Usability is best summarized by satisfaction, memorability, and efficiency. Some questions are vital to the functionality and design of your physician website. How pleasing is the web site to look at? Can a user quickly find what they are looking for? How quickly and efficiently can a potential patient complete your “goal”? (Goals can be contacting the office for making an appointment or just finding the patient portal) This brings up another vital attribute; utility. Utility simply refers to a sites layout, and its functionality predicated on the layout. Usability and utility go hand in hand.

Important Usability Factors for Your Medical Website

  1. Each and every page should have valuable content
    While this point does not necessarily relate to a website’s design itself, it relates directly to its utility. Make sure that all your pages on your medical site have something valuable to offer. It is absolutely vital that you provide quality and useful content to your visitors, or the design is meaningless. If each and every page on your site does not offer something useful to your visitors, then it is important that you modify your site. As stated before, usability is useless without utility. After all, what is the point in making a site look great, if the content is not useful for the readers? Content for your medical website is king. Your goal should be to become a reliable medical resource for new or potential patients.

  2. Never try to distract your visitors
    Be it pop-ups, blinking or scrolling text, or even auto-loading sound or music, these kinds of gimmicks end up being distractions for the user. You can look at WebMD as an example of a website without distractions. The health providing website has no flashing text and no music. Websites for doctors and other healthcare providers should be just as professional.

  3. Make sure your site is well organized
    When working with physicians, medical staff or the office manager, we put a lot of thought into the organization of the site and structure. Again, this falls under the category of usability. What is the point of having great content if your readers cannot easily find it? To improve your sites organization and layout, try to include both a “home” button, and a menu on every page. It has been proven that users do not like navigational links at the bottom of long pages, so it is important to have a menu at the top of your site. Your medical website project manager will of course guide you in this process. At the least we recommend the following for your navigation: Home, Services, Patient Information, and Contact Us. This is the very basic information users are looking for when visiting your website.

It is important to keep all of these things in mind when designing or redesigning a physician website. When making any changes, or adding content to your doctor website, always think about the value of what you are adding, and what it will add to your site that was not already there before. Above all, always remember that a combination of usability and utility will lead to the perfect balance between site design, and content.

Your personal project manager at Physician Designs takes all of this into consideration when working with you to come up with an effective medical website. We have experience working with hundreds of medical offices and physicians on their websites and internet marketing campaigns. We can also help you choose the best social media marketing strategy for your practice.

Orthopedic Surgeon Website Design

Physician Designs provides custom web design and marketing services for all types of orthopedic surgeons. Our orthopedic web design service includes custom design, mobile-friendly Flash animations, animated patient education videos, and internet and social media marketing. What makes our process different is that we take a very goal oriented approach. During our consultation we will ask what your goal is. It can be as simple as just providing more information about your practice or just as a way for patients to access a patient portal on your website.

Many times, however, the goal is for the website to become a marketing tool for attracting new patients. Having an orthopedic website designed and marketed by a professional company will not only increase your ROI but also project an image of organization and professionalism. Our medical website marketing services include Google AdWords management, Search Engine Optimization, and Social Media Marketing. By using the combination of these services, your orthopedic surgery website will be able to rank at the very top of search engines. Our social media marketing service includes the use of Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, and Pinterest.

Our design and marketing process is very simple. We have no sales people – so when you call us, you speak directly with a project manager. That project manager will be your go-to person if you choose to move forward with our web design or marketing services. This allows us to become familiar with your medical practice from the very first conversation. The initial consultation takes about 15 minutes and then within three business days, we will show you at least two different custom designed options.

Pace OrthopedicsWe recently completed a custom project for an orthopedic surgeon in South Jersey. The physicians at PACE specialize in orthopedics and provide treatment for sports related injuries, arthritis, muscle tendon damage, and auto accident injuries. We are also in the process of optimizing the website for ranking on Google and other search engines.

Pediatrician Website Design & SEO

We have started an SEO marketing campaign for a pediatrician in San Antonio, TX, Dr. Scott Cuming. The Physician Designs team also designed the custom medical website. The physician has been in practice since 1978 with a board certification in Pediatrics.

pediatric website designThe practice provides the following medical services for infants thru young adults: physical exams, sports physicals, immunizations, urgent care, and same day sick visits.

Our medical web design and marketing service will include having unique content on the website, inner page links, proper meta tags, html/xml sitemaps, social media marketing, and local listings.

You can see the website at www.scottcumingmd.com.

We provide complete medical practice website design and marketing services for physicians. With a custom medical website and marketing plan from Physician Designs, you can stay ahead of your local competition and show at the top of search results.

When you contact Physician Designs, you will only speak with a Project Manager – we don’t have any sales reps. The Project Manager you speak with will be your one point of contact from there onwards for your website design or marketing campaign.