Dental Practice Management – 5 Features Your Dental Practice Website Must Have
In the fast-moving world of internet and social media, having a website for your dental practice is a must.
Yes, it’s an absolute must and one of the most important tools of Dental Practice Management.
You might ask why then here are the reasons
- It’s the 21st century and almost the entire world lives on the internet. So, by not having a website for your dental practice you are losing out on a large amount of exposure to thousands of prospective netizens who are looking for dentists and can be your potential patient/client.
- Having a website and social media integration helps to build a community of patients who have been treated in your dental practice. Such patients spread good words and reviews about your practice among their friends and family. Without a website for your practice, you are missing the chance to expand your reach.
- It gives an instant information to the potential patient about all the high-quality dental services that you provide. Almost all patients by habit check the website of a dental practice to evaluate before they decide to pay you a visit. Not having a website will create a dent in the trust factor of the prospective patient.
What are the features you Should Ask the Web Designer to install in you Dental Website
What is the Ultimate Goal in Having a Website for Your Dental Practice?
The Goal is very straight forward
- To get more prospective patients to know about you, your Dental Practice.
- To build an Online Brand for your Dental Practice.
- To impress patients and get treatment appointment from prospective patients/clients.
Any Dental Website Must Have These Features – So ask your Web Designer to integrate all these 5 features we are discussing below.
#1. A Professional Modern Design/Look
- This is the most important aspect of your site. The look can decide whether the patient stays on your website or just leaves it.
- You know what they say about first impressions: They matter.
- A clean, professional website tells visitors your practice is reputable. A clean and properly arranged website is perceived well by the patients and they are more likely to browse your site. Credibility research from Stanford University found that 50% of consumers say they make judgments about a company’s credibility based on its website design.
The Moment a visitor sees the Web Site, it should be clear that it’s a Dental Website with all the relevant heading clearly visible on the top of the site.
- Most ideal color base to use in the website are blue and off white.
What Not To Do?
Don’t get overzealous and go all flashy animated in the design of your website. Avoid flashy bright contrasting colors that might be annoying to the patient/client.
Make the TOP header of the website clear and bold with all the clearly visible headings. It must have an:
- About Page that tells the patient about you & your qualifications. Also keep it a little personal, write about your motivation and your desire to service the community.
- Have one SERVICE page detailing all the services you are providing in your dental practice. Mention in detail about the STERILIZATION methods that you follow. Many patients are scared of getting a cross infection and well-mentioned sterilization methods in your clinic will appeal to the patients.
- Make a GALLERY section. Post some of your best after before case pics that you feel will appeal to patients. Do not put Bloody Extraction or Oral Diseases pics. That can really appear messy and turn patients off. Such pictures induce the fear of pain in patients. Put the pics of your cases that have good aesthetic results.
- Keep a TESTIMONIAL page with good favorable reviews by previous patients. Ask your old satisfied patients to send in their reviews.
- Create a BLOG page where you write about Oral health topics for the reading of your visitors. Try to write good original articles that will appeal to readers.
- Make a good CONTACT page with complete details on contacting you via email or social media. Also give the complete address of your clinic with embedded map so that patients can easily find your dental practice. Set up clearly mentioned contact number on which the patients can call to get assistance to reach your set up.
Your contact information should appear in the upper right-hand corner of your website on every single page. That’s where visitors expect to see it. Don’t make them hunt it down! Include a call-to-action, as well. Don’t assume your prospective patients know what to do. Your call-to-action can be as simple as “Call today for an appointment.”
You should also include your office hours, a map showing your location, and an appointment request form. You can add the appointment form in the contact page.
See Next Slide for Point 2 & 3
Good Programming & Coding by the Designer
See Next Slide
#2. A Good Programming of Your Dental Site without Bugs
Always keep emphasizing to your website designer that coding should be simple and nothing much overloaded and complicated. The idea is to have a simple website that’s easy to manage, update and which loads fast.
As mentioned above there are many ways to platform your website & the easiest and free is WordPress. Also for WordPress, you will find many nicely designed ready to use professional website templates.
Also Don’t worry at all about using the WordPress. It’s the most widely used platform in the world for making websites and you will find lots of step by step documentation all over the internet on how to install and use WordPress.
It is very easy to learn and then you don’t need to ask your developer every time you want to make some changes to your website.
#3. The Myth of SEO
(Search Engine Optimisation)
Search Engine Optimisation is the process to make you site more visible in Google search and other search engines. For example – Suppose a patient is based in India, Mumbai and looking for a clinic in Mumbai East and he searches on google. Then if you, the dentist is based in the nearby area and your Search Engine Optimisation is good then, google search results will show your Dental Clinic website on the first page of search results. 
- This increases the chances of a prospective patient to check out your clinic website and potentially be your client.
- You also have the option to pay money to google to promote your dental clinic website in the search results. You might have noticed some search results will come on top of the page with Ad written next to them. Those are the paid advertisements and they further increase your chances that a prospective patient might visit your site.
So, SEO is the tool to make you stand out among the crowd of websites.
Google is always evolving and so does the SEO.
Many designers charge a Lot for the SEO service, so make sure you are getting the TOP of the search results. Don’t just pay the designer and play the waiting game.
An effective SEO will make you dental clinic website more visible to all the prospective patients in many places near and reasonably far from you (Google can exactly know the address of your clinic and show the search results to all the prospective patients looking for a dentist).
So, keep asking your Designer about SEO and check that in a month by searching for your clinic. If your SEO is good then your Dental Clinic website should be visible in the TOP searches for dental practice when searched from your geographical demography.
If in case you see your site is not in the top search results then ask your designer about the SEO.
Make sure that the SEO of your website from the inception is set up correctly and from then it an ongoing process to maintain it.
Just realize that SEO settings are like a Direction Pointers that will point the right audience looking for dental treatment towards your site.
Google Adwords if the Property & Service of Google
You can also use Google Adwords – The paid Google Advertising system where you can control which demo graph the ads are shown.
See Next Slide
#4 Point – That Your Dental Clinic Website Must Have
A Responsive Design
#4. Mobile Responsive Dental Website
- 90 % of the people using the internet are spending most of their browsing time – browsing on a mobile device. Take yourself as an example. You must be spending a considerable amount of time browsing on your mobile device. Similarly, many of your potential patient clients will be searching for a dentist on their mobile phone.
- Hence, it’s very important that your Dental Clinic Website, when viewed from a mobile device like mobile phone, tab etc. adapts depending on the device being used. As many of your patients will view your dental clinic website on their mobile phone, it’s imperative that their experience is as smooth as possible on their smartphones.
Ask your designer To provide you a mobile responsive site. When he delivers you a design, check completely the site on all mobile devices and find out any faults if there is.
In this case, WordPress is again very easy to Use.
There are many remade professional designs available which are mobile responsive.
Point to Note: If you are spending money on hiring a Web Designer – Please make sure to ask him.her to provide a responsive design.
Many times a developer might tell you that a separate site will be made for the mobile version. DO NOT AGREE to that – as in long term it will lead to design issues.
So, from the beginning always go for a responsive design for your website, which will make it easy for you to make any design changes in the future. Responsive websites also fare well in google searches and are more favored by the users out of which many can be your potential patients.
See Next
#5 Point Your Website Must Have
#5 a – Social Media Integration
A large number of your potential patients/clients are on social media sites like Facebook, twitter etc. So there must be tools in your website to integrate with social media.
This feature allows audience on Facebook to like your website, share your articles. It’s essential to keep pushing your Dental Practice Website and Social Media Presence.
Make a Note to Ask your Web Designer to integrate Social Media feature. It is not a very difficult thing and can be easily done.
#5 b – Build Your Subscribers List
One of the most important aspects of your dental website is to have the e-mails of readers who like to read your contents.
In this feature, a pop-up comes on your site that prompts the visitor to enter his/her email id and subscribe to the mailing list of your Dental Practice Website. Many times people do complain about the pop-ups or having to subscribe, but still, it is of great necessity. Always remember people who are really interested in your contents will only provide the email as they are interested to be notified about your future contents.
What’s the benefit of email subscription?
The benefit is that you get a database of e-mail subscribers with whom you can communicate periodically to inform them about new offers, treatment facilities, and oral health advancements.
This method builds up communication between you and your patients. It takes
It takes some time to build up the email subscriber list, but it’s of great value in the future.
So these are the 5 must have features if you are planning to start your dental clinic website.
If you don’t have a website yet then, it is high time you start building a website for your professional clinic.
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