A dental website has specific requirements that make it unique from websites in other industries. For starters, many people are afraid to go to the dentist. So your website needs to be user-friendly, SEO-friendly, soothing, and informative. How do you achieve this?
Make your dental website design better to attract more patients. Using quality content, dental SEO, and website marketing for a mobile-friendly user experience.
Your dentistry website - the virtual front door to your dental practice and the backbone of your marketing strategy - must be absolutely compelling for visitors to stay with it. This is your first interaction with new patients and your first opportunity to build trust, so it's crucial to make engagement count.
Consider a number of basic goals when creating your website. As a dental professional, you should aim to educate your patients, show them that your dental practice is trustworthy and highlight the services and specialties you offer.
Now that you know what your goals are, let's take a closer look at what current and potential patients want from a dental website.
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Custom Dental Website Design
If you want to have a successful dental practice, you can no longer rely on word of mouth to be the focus of your online marketing efforts. Even with a recommendation, most people will go online to check out a place before they try it. This phenomenon is tenfold in the health and dental industry. People need to feel confident that they are in good hands.
Never underestimate the power of dental anxiety!
Most people stay in the same dental office their entire lives. This means that finding the right dentist is a major issue for potential patients. They will search tirelessly online until they find what they think is a good choice.
For this reason, the quality of your website is one of the most important factors when it comes to converting new patients.
Your dental marketing efforts start with a high-quality, high-converting website. Your dental practice is unique, and that should be reflected in your custom dental website design.
Some of the top dental website design mistakes, such as slacking off on your service pages or lacking a call to action (CTA), are the quickest way to close the door to new patients.
Here are some must-haves that every dental website should include:
- A patient safety resource page
- A frequently asked questions section
- Online scheduler and secure online forms
- Communicating how you work
- Easy navigation
A new or redesigned dental website will help kick-start your SEO efforts, impress your potential patients, and ultimately help grow your dental practice.
Here are some tips to ensure your dental website design is designed to attract new patients.
Dental Website Functionality
While it may be tempting to focus on aesthetics, your dental website should be designed with functionality in mind. If your beautiful website is impossible to navigate or understand, users will abandon it and your efforts will be in vain.
Display basic information prominently
Most visitors to your site are probably looking for the same information. Make it easy for them by displaying it on every page, so that no matter where they land on your website, they can easily find what they are looking for.
Include information such as your address, phone number, and hours of operation, as well as the names and credentials of your dentists. You should also include a link to a contact page, where users can fill out a form for you to contact them via email.
Provide answers to frequently asked questions
While it's easy to create a basic website and list a phone number in hopes that potential patients will contact you, not everyone wants to (or has time to) pick up the phone just to get their questions answered. That's why you need to create detailed pages to answer common patient questions.
These pages should include services provided, insurance accepted, and prices. Creating these pages should be relatively easy, as all you need to do is type in the answers you're probably used to giving on a daily basis, but the more information you provide, the more comfortable potential patients will feel about coming into your office.
Reduce the number of clicks
Try to require as few clicks as possible for your potential patient to get everything they need from your website. Complex navigation systems and confusing sidebars can frustrate users and even cause them to abandon your site for a more user-friendly one.
Use responsive dental website design
Offering a highly functional website today means your site is optimized for mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones. These websites are called "responsive," which means they look the same and are just as functional no matter what device a visitor uses to access them. Knowing that a majority of people now use devices other than computers to browse the web, it's important to make sure your website is accessible even when users are not on their desktop computers.
Dental Website With High-Quality Images
Images and aesthetics are essential to any website. You may not think you have much to photograph and share as a dentist, but photos can put people at ease and make them feel comfortable when they first come in.
Provide high-quality images of the interior and exterior of your dental practice, so patients know what to expect. Avoid stock photos of dentists and dental assistants and prefer high-resolution photos of the people who work in your office.
Adding A Blog To Your Dental Website
Blogs are a great way to keep your patients informed and your site current and relevant. Business owners in almost every industry are aware of the power of blogs, and many have had success using them, even for topics not traditionally covered in blogs. A blog can be an important part of a successful dental website, especially if you update it frequently with useful and authoritative articles.
On-Page SEO for Dental Website
Typing a query into a search engine is the first step to finding just about anything on the Internet, from weather forecasts to a top dental practice.
Actually, 93% of online experiences start with a search engine.
Google currently dominates the global search engine market. So it's no surprise that Google's guidelines are the baseline standard for determining your dental practice's online visibility.
Keyword Phrases
Targeted keyword phrases or long-tail keywords are crucial to dental SEO (Search Engine Optimization). The more similar (or semantically related) the keywords are, the more likely you are that Google will rank your website. You will need separate pages if you want to rank for several different keyword phrases. While it's helpful to repeat the keyword in the title, headings, subheadings, and page URL, there is a caveat: don't overdo it. This is called keyword stuffing. Google will see it and penalize you for this.
Site Speed
Site speed, the time it takes for your site to load and respond, is a key factor in SEO performance, and Google has identified it as a key factor in determining your search ranking. While reliable external links are valuable, internal links improve your website's usability as well as its appeal to search engines.
Metadata
Make sure metadata descriptions include primary keywords and are unique and specific. Text and alt tags in images and videos, as well as some text descriptions, make it easier for search engines to find your webpage.
CTAs and the "Contact Us" Page
Calls to Action
Incorporating one or two well-placed CTAs on your website starts the conversation between the patient and the dental practice. It can make the difference between someone simply browsing and someone taking action by clicking on a link to schedule an appointment, download content, or explore other treatment options.
Think of CTAs as helpful signposts to point an interested patient in the right direction to find the information they are looking for.
Effective CTAs are considered one of the best SEO practices, and while there is no one-size-fits-all approach, some work better than others. An attention-grabbing dentist website design, coupled with a clear and compelling CTA, can help your site stand out from the competition.
Contact Page
Creating a contact page is another way to convert visitors into new patients. Encourage visitors to fill out a form on your website and collect their email addresses. In the end, you'll attract more responses than a simple "contact us" button and start building a very effective email marketing list.
Dentist Website Design Summary
As you can see, there are many ideas to consider when thinking about creating your dental website. The best thing you can do is keep your patients in mind when designing. After all, they are the people you need to impress.
Partnering with a marketing company that specializes in dental website design and fully understands SEO, mobile-friendly design and the value of engaging content is an effective way to add value to your dental practice.
