December 31st, 2009
What should a doctor include for his or her website?
I’ve made a short list of the different ‘parts’ you may want to include for an elective health care website:
- A Captivating Home Page–First impressions count!
- Something Different – Stand out from your competitors – try a flash design or morphing photo galleries!
- Contact Page & Quick Contact on all pages – Your website should convert people, make it easily accessible!
- A call to Action – Let folks know how to reach you…
- Before and After Photo Galleries
- Patient Testimonials
- Procedure Details
- Your Practice’s Branding/logos
- An Article Gallery – Regular content is a must!
- Exciting Videos
- Staff/Doctor Bio
- Financing Page/links
- Media Appearance spotlights
- Featured Patient Section–share people’s stories in a multi-media section
- Newsletter Signup
- Links to Blog, Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc
- Special Offers Section
- 3D Procedure Gallery
- F.A.Q. or Frequently Asked Questions–> This is a nice place to answer those common questions!
Here is more information and examples of elective healthcare websites
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December 11th, 2009
Establish Goals for your aesthetic website.
Please note: I am going a little out of order here because I realized while writing Part I: Who that identifying goals should really be the first step in framing a website project.
There’s too much better material out there on successful goal setting, so I won’t address it here. However, if you need a place to start, I’d recommend reviewing, the second habit, outlined by Stephen Covey which instructs us to “Start with the end in mind(R)” by:
- Defining Vision and Values
- Setting Measurable Team and Personal Goals
- Starting Projects Successfully
- Focusing on desired outcomes
I would suggest taking these concepts and applying them to your practice’s internet marketing strategy. Briefly I will review two major goals that cosmetic and plastic surgeons have in regards to their website:
Conversion
Your elective health website, as the central piece of your “puzzle,” performs a critical roll in your marketing strategy. Primarily, the website should be a compelling marketing tool that facilitates something known as conversion, taking a client from being a simple viewer to an actual patient or customer. This goal doesn’t consider how the viewer found the website in the first place but instead looks at the experience the viewer has while looking at the site and determines how that experience got them closer to working with a doctor.
To meet this goal, a website, in general, should be:
- Modern
- Aesthetically pleasing
- Easy for viewers to navigate
- Functional in respect to it’s purpose
- A wealth of useful, well laid out information
- Engaging, compelling, and exciting
- Easily accessible for clients to reach out to the practice when they’ve decided to convert
Marketing
A second major function would be to use the website as a marketing tool, to get the practice found in the first place, typically cosmetic surgeons or doctors will utilize a search engine marketing strategy. If you decide your website will be used for such a purpose, I would encourage you to “start with the end in mind” and work with a firm that can meet both of these goals at the same time. Specifically you’ll want to make sure that the firm is capable of creating a website that “speaks fluently to the search engines.”
I would most likely be remiss if I also didn’t include a list of reasons why a website would be useful for cosmetic surgeons:
- Credibility – A doctor without a website is like a store without a storefront, questionable.
- Disseminate Information – Educating your viewers can help them make the best information and can save you from repeating yourself and your staff from extra hours of “busy work.” This would also help establish you and your staff as the authorities which helps with conversion.
- Marketing – See above.
- Conversion – See above.
- Automatic Sales – Some doctors will use their sites as a way to facilitate the sales process for products they offer.
- Pre-qualify customers – Using your website to pre-qualify patients for many things: procedure, financing, end results.
- Distinguish your practice – This industry is highly competitive, explain what makes you special.
- Repeat Customers – Using bookmarks and just having a webiste encourages repeat business.
- Referrals – A website also makes it easy for your existing customers to refer their friends and family to your business.
In some ways, a website is an online parallel to your actual physical practice. It’s a place for people to come when they think they want your services. They start evaluating you when they first approach your facility just as when they first view your page. If the interior doesn’t meet or exceed their expectations they may never make it to the counter to inquire about your services just as online viewers can get turned off and leave a website without looking past the homepage.
As a final thought, establishing goals for your practice’s website will help you to take ownership of the project and will help you get a site that fits your needs.
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