5 ways to wake up your Web site

Your Web site isn’t the only place you’ll want to post your videos. YouTube is second only to Google as the most popular search engine.³ Just about everyone goes to YouTube to view videos on whatever interests them. See our April 2014 article, titled “Using the Internet in your practice. Part 2: Generating new patients using social media,” to learn more on getting started with YouTube.

Videos will improve your Web site rankings and will increase the time visitors spend on the site. When done properly—labeling the videos with relevant keywords, making the videos short, and presenting information in layman’s language with reasons why it is important to seek a professional if the viewer is experiencing these types of symptoms—they are a great way to convert visitors to patients.

4. Hook‘em on the homepage
If you want your Web site to create a favorable first impression, your homepage should reflect that positive impression. Remember, the homepage, as the face of your practice, is the first thing that a patient will see long before she picks up the phone or comes to the office.

A potential patient visiting your site will make a snap judgment within a few seconds. Think of your homepage as a highway billboard. There are about 3 seconds to make an impression and for a driver to decide whether or not she will exit the highway to buy gas or eat at a restaurant or even contact a business in the future by telephone or, most likely, online. A visit to your Web site has the same attraction timing.

Your homepage must be attractive; provide useful, current information; and have pleasing graphics—all without requiring the visitor to scroll down too far. Your Web site is your opportunity to create a good first impression—an opportunity that won’t happen again.

Use compelling headlines with keyword-related content. You want to make sure you use keywords that a prospective patient might search for in a main headline and in the main body of your home­page. But patients are not the only ones who spot those key terms. Search engines also crawl your Web site for keywords that prospective patients may type into the Google search bar—words like gynecologist, ObGyn, urinary leakage, breast lump, pelvic pain, ­menopause, etc. Using those keywords helps your site to be found more often by patients and helps those prospective patients find information relevant to their medical needs.

5. Place calls to action on every page
Contact us! This is so rudimentary, yet many Web sites do not have easy-to-find contact information on their homepages. Be sure to include your phone number (which could be different than your regular phone office number so you can track how many calls you get from your Web site).

Add a “schedule an appointment” icon in a prominent position on the homepage so the visitor does not have to scroll down to search for it. But don’t just stop at the homepage. Your contact information should be on every page so that, when the visitor is on a page reading about a condition or procedure, the “schedule an appointment” button is right there for her to click.

Be sure to evaluate your contact page. Make sure it’s easy for patients to find multiple ways to connect with you and your office: phone, fax, email, and snail mail.

Interactivity is important. Why not have an “Ask the doctor your question” field? It makes the site interactive and gives you the opportunity to communicate and develop a relationship with your patients.

Additional interactivity
Social media is the new buzz word-of-mouth. Your patients use Facebook, YouTube, blogging, and Twitter every day. It is the easiest way to stay connected and make your practice and your brand part of their daily lives. Social media builds loyalty. Integrating social media into your Web site provides new opportunities to engage your existing patients and to attract new ones to your practice.

Connect to medical records. Your Web site should have an easy portal for patients to connect to their medical records and laboratory results in a secure, encrypted fashion to comply with HIPAA regulations.

You can do this yourself!
You and your staff should be able to make changes on your Web site without having to contact your Web developer, even if you do not have full-time IT assistance. For example, in Dr. Baum’s practice, his support staff can add testimonials, content, and pictures without contacting the Web developer or knowing code.

Make sure that function is designed into your site and that your Web developer teaches you and your staff how to keep your site updated.