Cheap medical website design …for ₹3000, genius or swindle?
Here is a situation that bewildered me this month!
I was in a meeting with a new potential client to discuss their medical practice’s marketing challenges and website performance.
Their major concerns were:
The number of leads coming from their website had dropped significantly since January 2019
Increasing competition and marketing efforts from other local medical practices
Lower number of referrals coming from other medical practitioners
The analysis revealed the following:
| The practice’s services and keywords were not attracting optimal search traffic
| A number of key Search Engine Optimisation features were missing from their website
| Website copy problems including readability, trust and layout issues
| Conversion problems – No patient journey to lead the website visitors to a next step
| Dated looking website and logo that did not reflect the practice’s ethos or services.
Increasing website lead conversion rates
In order to increase their website’s lead conversion rates required an intimate knowledge of:
On-page and off page Search Engine Optimization
Professional website copywriting
Website conversion analysis and testing
Patient needs wants and desires
Trust elements that patients look for
I will explain these skills in brief to you, as I did the potential client:
1. Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization is about optimizing the number of potential patients that find your practice’s services using a search engine such as Bing, Yahoo and most importantly, Google.
Search engines sort through millions of pages of information to find the most relevant results to display to your potential patients about their search. The way search engines organize search data results is through an algorithm.
Using their algorithm, search engines rank the importance of your websites information against other relevant websites and decides where your website will appear (position or rank) on a page.
Now the algorithm for every search engine changes constantly to “improve” search results. So your ranking today may not mean you will necessarily be in the same position on the page tomorrow let alone next week or year.
There are over 250 factors that related to Search Engine Optimisation and 50 related on-page SEO alone – MOZ On Page Factors.
Some of these factors include:
| Your website’s URL or address
| Page headline (H1) or title
| Keyword your potential patient has typed into the search engine
| Mention of keyword in your websites copy
| Images and how they are named on your website
| Social media and videos
You get the idea – It’s a specialist skill set that takes time to master.
2. Website copywriting – Can anyone write for the web? The simple answer is yes but….
The biggest mistake I see is most medical website copy is written by medical staff using complex medical terminology.
Most patients simply don’t understand medical terminology – This potential clients website was full of medical terms. On top of this:
| The terms weren’t explained
| They used acronyms without explanation
| Had large chunks of text
| Used unrelated and poorly positioned images
| This websites copy was hard to read let alone understand.
What goes into making great website copy?
There are over 30 factors are involved.
The most important factor in producing great website copy is keeping your patient wants, needs and desires at the forefront of everything. Ensure:
| Website copy is short and to the point
| You use simple language
| You use bullet points to break information up
Other factors:
| Typeface – Make sure it’s easy to read online
| Font size – Make sure it’s at least 14 point
| Colors – Keep them simple and brand relevant
| Images – Use real images of your staff where possible.
3. Website conversion – Analysis and testing
At the heart of every medical website lies the wish to inform and convert visitors into patients!
This call to action was at the bottom of every page on this potential client’s website – It’s probably on your website as well: This call to action was yielding them between 8 to 16 new patients per month. Nowhere near enough patients for a practice of their size.
I set them a progressive goal to increase their lead conversion rates by 1%, 3% to 5% per month. Utilizing some basic website conversion best practice techniques we mapped out their patients journey
The next step we recommended:
Including a ‘New patients’ section and button on the home page. This button was also to be used on the key diagnosis and treatment pages on the website. This page is designed to outline the step-by-step approach their practice uses to help new patients solve their problems.
4. Patient – Needs, wants and desires
In order to connect with your patients you need to know what they are going through, how they feel and reflect this information in your website.
If you want to know what your patients are feeling about their ailments or situation ask them, or get them to fill out a survey. You will start to see a pattern forming in as few as 10 responses. Achieving results – Website elements must work together
Putting it together you are now seeing how:
| Search Engine Optimization
| Website Copywriting
| Conversion
| Patient – Needs, wants and desires and;
| Trust elements
All these elements work together to achieve the results you want. There are more factors involved from a technical and design perspective. For example – If your website or logo looks tired, old and dated what image does that portray to your potential cliental? They will most likely perceive your services the same way. We may not judge books by their cover but, we do websites. Thank you so much for your time reading this article
I hope you found it educational about the specialist skills and efforts required to improve website performance and increase lead conversion rates.
If you have any questions please feel free to contact us.