Is your medical website attracting visitors but struggling with converting website traffic into patients? Your medical website has the opportunity to increase the number of patients you have. Each time a web visitor browses your website, you gain a potential patient. However, potential patients aren’t reaching any farther than browsing. There are website elements that can contribute to the users’ experience and improve patient conversion rates.
Medical websites are extremely important in the eyes of browsing patients. It is where prospective patients go to learn more about you and where they form their first impression about your medical business. With that being said, medical websites must catch the attention of their users and hold their attention long enough to leave them curious about the medical services that they offer.
The design, color, and theme of a website can attract prospective patients, but it takes much more than web design to carry their attention, and eventually lead them to contact your facility. As the internet has become the primary resource for healthcare searches, patients have set their expectations high and consider a website’s visual representation, usability, accessibility, and content.
Convert More Patients Using These 7 Tips
In order for your medical website to reach its intended audience, ensure you are utilizing marketing strategies that will increase its visibility. This is half the battle when trying to increase conversion rates. In this regard, you are driving traffic to a well-kept website.
The goal of your medical website is to increase traffic and convert traffic into patients. To do so, you must virtually connect with patients in a productive way that will direct them to contact your medical facility. However, converting patients isn’t as easy as it sounds and it requires strategy. Continue to read this article to learn about 7 website elements that can improve your conversion rates.
Tone and Design
Your medical website must provide its users with a welcoming tone. It is where prospective patients form their first impression and opinion about you and your medical facility. Consider the first time you visit a friend’s home. Upon walking in the door you start to form thoughts and opinions that dictate your first impression of who they are as an individual. The same goes for prospective patients that browse your website. Essentially, your medical website is a portal to who you are as a medical professional and how your medical business is. Provide users with a professional web design, style, and tone to accurately represent your medical business.
Interesting and Informative Bios
When prospective patients are deciding on whether or not a medical provider is best for them, they will consider the provider’s bio and any other information they come across regarding the provider. This is how prospective patients develop trust for providers prior to contacting the medical facility. Create informative, interesting bios for the providers and staff at your medical facility. Along with listing history and educational background, provide patients with an insight into who you are as a medical professional. Include personal interests, hobbies, professional philosophy, favorite quotes, how you work with patients, and why you became a doctor. This allows prospective patients to connect with you not only as a patient, but also as a friend.
Overview of Services
As a medical professional, you attend to many different patients throughout each day, each with different needs. Showcase your expertise and work so that prospective patients are informed about the services you offer. For example, if you run a Med Spa, it is likely you offer a handful of services such as botox, facials, acne treatment, laser hair removal, etc. showcase your expertise by posting photographs of your work and explanations to each.
Designate one single webpage for each service that your medical facility offers. This allows you to thoroughly explain the work you do, and insert as many photographs as you would like.
Online Appointment Booking
Online appointment booking capabilities contribute to a good customer experience. Patients want the option to either call to make an appointment or simply make an appointment online. The more convenient your medical website is for users, the more likely it is for them to contact your medical business.
Telehealth as an Option
After the year 2020, many healthcare patients were forced to use telehealth methods to meet and communicate with medical professionals. After this major shift, many patients don’t want to return back to in-person appointments. According to PatientPop, over 80% of patients reported that they now prefer virtual appointments and will continue to virtually connect with their providers. Though not everyone will prefer this way to attend medical appointments, it is wise to offer it as an option when it comes to appointment booking.
Communication Options
Having options for patients is important as there is no one method that every patient will prefer. While there will be patients that prefer phone calls or emails, others prefer text messages. In fact, nearly 90% of consumers prefer text messages as opposed to phone calls and emails.
Almost every patient you have has a phone that receives text messages. As generations grow and evolve, eventually, all patients will prefer text messages. Text messages are instant, easy, and convenient for patients, especially when you have busy patients that cannot respond to phone calls or check their emails. Text messaging is a great way to communicate with patients and send reminders and updates. Providing patients with options communicates that you are loyal and considerate of their needs.
Call To Action
Once prospective patients land on your medical website, they should be able to easily find information regarding how they can contact you and where your medical facility is located. Each page on your medical website should have a clear and user-friendly call to action. A call to action could be one of the following: scheduling an appointment, signing up for a newsletter, following a social media account, or sending a request for additional information. All of which can lead to patient conversion and an increase in the number of patients you have.
Recap
The elements of your medical website will affect your patient conversion rates. It is important to improve your medical website to attract website traffic and hold the attention of prospective patients. In summary, here is a list of the 7 website elements that can improve your conversion metrics:
- Website Tone and Design
- Interesting and Informative Bios
- Overview of Services
- Online Appointment Booking
- Telehealth as an Option
- Communication Options
- Call to action