Healthcare organizations are businesses too, which means they need websites to stay competitive. Competition is surprisingly high in the medical field, and keeping up with the modern trends and marketing preferences is no easy task, particularly if you’re trying to cater to a younger audience.
Many of these challenges can be fixed simply by having a great healthcare website. If you’re going into the healthcare field, considering your website and marketing before opening your practice is essential. Whether you’re building your first website or need some tips for improving your existing platform, here are some ways that you can design a better healthcare website.
1. Blog Away
Education is one of the best tools you have as a healthcare provider. Patients will come to your website not only seeking information about your practice, but also for information about common injuries and illnesses. Always recommend coming to your office for an examination, and use your blog to publish a variety of educational articles, charts, and information to improve the authority and quality of your brand. Consider including this education in the web design process in order to promote your organization and brand.
2. Integrate Social Media
Social media is a powerful tool you can use to connect your brand with your customers. This is also a great platform where organizations can really listen to the community. It might seem daunting to keep up with the constant posting, commenting, and communicating, but it’s important when building trust and reaching out to your patients.
On your website, make social integration simple with buttons and plugins on your website. The world is progressively turning towards technology and social integration. If you make it easy to share blog posts, interact with social comments, and give feedback, then prospective patients will do so.
3. Focus on Design
Simplicity is essential for conveying your message to your consumers. The medical world is known for being difficult to understand, so when patients look at your website, the last thing they want is a busy platform with excessive features. This will overwhelm them, and result in them leaving the site.
Focus on using clarity and simplicity in your design. Use a simple, solid color background with text that’s easy to read. Avoid using long blocks of text on your homepage and focus on conceptual imagery. If it’s easy to read and engage with, consumers will assume your medical practice will be, too.
4. Build Trust with Accuracy and Clarity
As a part of your design process, make sure you’re actively building trust. The last message you want to convey with your website is one of deceit and confusion. From your landing pages to your blog posts, make sure you’re being accurate and clear in the language, photos, and graphics.
As a general rule of thumb, avoid making promises you can’t keep. Saying things like, “You’ll receive the best care in town,” or “We’re the only organization you can trust,” will make your website look cheap and fake. If you must post promises in your web design, choose ones that you know you can satisfy.
5. Use Calls to Action
You can spend a lot of time educating your web visitors, but it doesn’t do much good if you don’t tell them what to do with it. Clear calls to action will direct your leaders to perform some kind of action on your website, whether it’s calling you for a consultation or signing up for your monthly newsletter.
Don’t bury these important instructions with images, text, and other elements on your website. A proper call to action will be clearly noticeable, perhaps with a red button or a single sentence at the end of a blog post. Directing customers to your organization is essential to gaining conversions from your website, so do your best.