When was the last time you upgraded your practice’s website? Do you recall? If not, that’s a good sign that it might be time to update your online presence.
Since small and local businesses are the subject of 74% of the 170,000,000 unique visitors visiting Google each month, you may miss out on many potential clients and referrals if your website needs to be optimized.
Before deciding to apply a fresh virtual coat of paint to your practice’s most effective marketing tool, you need to consider several procedures involved in this big task, which is website upgrading. But first, let’s quickly go through why updating your website is important before moving on to some tips for doing so.
Why Should My Website Be Updated?
The Internet Has Changed Over the Past Five Years
One, two, or even five years ago, the internet was a very different place. The truth is that modern websites are designed to load material more quickly, adjust to different screen sizes, and present your content in eye-catching and original ways. All of this is accomplished through newly designed practice websites, which are also highly search engine friendly. This helps your site rank higher than a competitor’s on a search result page (provided you have high-quality content and a solid inbound marketing plan, but that’s another story).
With the help of innovative office websites, you may interact with patients in novel ways and give new and recurring patients a pleasant, comparatively stress-free experience.
With the help of innovative office websites, you may interact with patients in novel ways and give new and recurring patients a pleasant, comparatively stress-free experience. Consider the following features for your new website:
- Links to patient portals to meet meaningful use criteria
- Fillable patient forms in PDF format
- Place pages with embedded maps and dialogue windows where users can ask basic inquiries
- Forms for appointment requests
As the HTML5 revolution gets underway, the internet is gradually moving away from utilizing Flash technology to render video and play audio on webpages. Many consumers will only be able to view this content briefly if your website employs flash at all (for example, as a slider on the home page or as part of a third-party patient education area).
The fact that the foundation upon which websites are constructed is constantly changing is arguably the most significant. That leads to what’s known as “friendly coding,” which makes content more accessible for search engines to understand and more arranged. Proper meta tags, titles, and keywords should be included on every page. Not only are these settings not updated or changeable on older sites, but some may not even have them, or they may need to be designed where search engines and you would find them most helpful.
How Should My Website Be Updated?
Things For Which You Should Get Ready
You should know you will need more time to finish your website makeover.
Redesigning the majority of new practice websites might take weeks or even months. It will be a long, hard process, so be ready. Before beginning, you should determine your goals for the new website, or at the very least, what issues you have with the one you now have. The effectiveness of the redesign will depend on how well you articulate your goals and vision for the website.
In actuality, one of the most crucial steps is strategy. Following the strategy, of course, there are other stages to your redesign: planning and design, building, optimizing, launching the site, and, in the end, assessing how your hard work paid off.
It’s also important to remember that hiring an independent company to optimize, arrange, and enhance your website will yield the finest results. Reputable companies will also thoroughly test your website to ensure it functions across various platforms and technological abilities for every user.
Form Your Plan
As mentioned, you should formulate and hone your plan. After defining your site’s vision, a good place to start is with a killer specification document that lists all the features you want your site to have. Feel free to list your requirements; your input will significantly alter this paper.
Next, let’s examine your website from the standpoint of a business owner and establish a few key points, such as:
- Successful benchmarks based on statistics
- Objectives for your new website
- Appropriate keywords for your field of expertise
- Analysis of competitors
- Media and content inventory
Make a note of the most popular search sites in your inventory; you want to keep them when you move.
What’s Next
Now that you’ve determined your goals and discussed your plan of action for the website, it’s time to start the exciting part: designing and developing. This is where the development of your website will start. Once more, it’s advised against doing this at home. To help you focus your expectations for the website’s design, feel free to peruse the current trends and possibilities for user interface design.
When offering design ideas and items you like, keep in mind that your website serves as a gateway for people to discover more about your practice. In other words, usability should precede aesthetics on a website; forms should function as one would anticipate, the site shouldn’t be visually complex, and menus should be simple to understand.
The hard work is effectively out of your hands once this is finished.
After receiving design proposals, you have to decide what you like, make adjustments to what you don’t, and wait for months of laborious effort to bear fruit.
After that, it’s time to launch and gauge success.
WebSights:
The DrMarketingTips Show’s Special Season into Mastering Websites
With 300+ episodes under our belt, the DrMarketingTips Show has been at the forefront of medical practice marketing, guiding practices like yours through the digital evolution. Now, we’re bringing together the best of our insights in a curated season: WebSights. Each episode is designed to offer actionable strategies, from understanding ADA compliances to mastering SEO and crafting compelling content.
WebSights:
The DrMarketingTips Show’s Special Season into Mastering Websites
With 300+ episodes under our belt, the DrMarketingTips Show has been at the forefront of medical practice marketing, guiding practices like yours through the digital evolution. Now, we’re bringing together the best of our insights in a curated season: WebSights. Each episode is designed to offer actionable strategies, from understanding ADA compliances to mastering SEO and crafting compelling content.