In this era of widespread internet connectivity, an attractive website is one of the keys to success in dentistry. Put simply, your practice’s website is an important aspect of your brand value. For example, a well designed website will have a positive psychological impact on potential patients, as a good user interface will affect their subconscious and increase your credibility.
While developing a website for your dental practice, you must exercise appropriate care since it will be a strategic driver of your marketing success. These five strategies will help you develop your website as a powerful tool to improve engagement and increase patient appointments.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is the most widely used web analytics service in the world. You don’t need to spend any money on the service, since it is completely free. It provides valuable insights into the statistics related to your website including, but not limited to:
- Traffic on your site, which means the number of people visiting your website during a particular time period
- Relative increases or decreases in the traffic on your website
- What visitors are viewing on your website
- The source that led visitors to your website, such as social media, search engines, or paid advertising
- Time spent by each visitor on your website, including the percentage of people who left your site within a few seconds
- Comparison of time spent on various pages of your website
Google Analytics is a powerful tool that can help you analyze the traffic on your website and strive to constantly improve its features and enhance your promotion strategy. It also can help you identify and set goals such as increasing the number of visitors you want on your website’s appointment page, procedure pages, or any other page. Plus, Google Analytics can be connected to your Google AdWords account—a combination that is perhaps the single greatest online marketing tool available today.
By setting your aims and analyzing the traffic coming through online advertising, you can precisely account for the cost spent to attract one patient. Since you know all about that each patient’s expenditures, you can perform a cost-benefit analysis of your online marketing strategy.
One important thing to remember is that your strategy should be dynamic. You should analyze your website traffic, set goals for the number of patients who will visit your facility, and always follow with concrete steps to enhance the effectiveness of your marketing strategy.
Social Share Buttons
Social share buttons refer to the hyperlinks on your website that allow visitors to easily share your content on social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter through a single click of the mouse. Online marketing experts have all acknowledged their effectiveness. Platforms such as WordPress recognize their potential and offer them without any additional costs.
If a page or particular content on your website is really good, its social share buttons will ensure that it “goes viral.” One or two viral posts can permanently increase your brand value. Therefore, dental websites must utilize this easy opportunity to expand their business.
Host Quality
The quality of your website’s host is the perhaps the single most influential factor for visitors to your website. A good server must have safe and secure hosting, good page speed (which means each page is downloaded quickly), and backup to cover for emergency conditions.
The speed is perhaps the most noticable aspect for users. If a webpage takes more than three seconds to load, users tend to lose interest in it. Thus, your practice’s brand value will suffer due to an error that can be easily eradicated.
Therefore, it is essential to invest adequately while choosing the host for your website. Money spent on quality will yield results. Lack of investment in this field and the consequent poor quality of your website will cause users to get frustrated and seek alternatives.
Photos of Your Office Staff
You must think of your website as an online simulation of your real-world clinical establishment. That’s why displaying photos of your office staff on your website is important. Your online visitors will get a feel for your office’s actual environment before they visit in person.
You must create a separate page for this purpose. Keep in mind a few things that can increase the effectiveness of this page:
- Photos must be of good quality
- Use color contrast to separate people from backgrounds
- People in the photos must be smiling mildly
- Include captions that describe the qualifications and position of each person in the photo
- Witty lines can be used in captions, but avoid dark humor
- Arrange the page well with separate sections for physicians, surgeons, nurses, and other staff
- Display photos of each and every staff member, including custodians, to portray the human face of your organization
Pixel Your Website on Facebook
Facebook is the largest social media platform, and practically every adult in the United States uses it today. So, we assume you already have a Facebook Business page. If not, create one as soon as possible.
Once you have the business page ready, you can pixel your website on the page for free. You just have to insert a small piece of code on your website, and it will allow you to reap a number of benefits including:
- The ability to display advertising to people who visit your website
- The use of your patients’ positive testimonials to drive more traffic to your website
Using a combination of your website and Facebook advertising, you might be able to create leads for patients, enhancing your business prospects. Like Google Analytics, your strategy must be dynamic, and you must strive to constantly improve upon it.
Conclusion
Online marketing is the most important way to position your brand in today’s world. Your practice’s website acts as a face of your business. Dental practitioners, then, should use their websites to portray the human face of their organization and market themselves to increase their website’s traction and appointments.
Mr. Arulrajah is president and CEO of Ekwa Marketing, a complete Internet marketing company that focuses on SEO, social media, marketing education, and the online reputations of dentists. With a team of more than 180 full-time marketers, ekwa.com helps dentists who know where they want to go get there by dominating their market and growing their business significantly year after year. If you have questions about marketing your practice online, call (855) 598-3320 or email naren@ekwa.com.
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