In many ways, your website is central to your dental marketing efforts. It allows you to capture the patient leads that you’ve spent time and money attracting. As such, it is important to develop and optimize your dental website in a way that maximizes your marketing investment and guarantees patient leads to capturing and conversion.
A high-converting and well-curated website should bring you new patients. It should consist of essential design features, effective call-to-actions and industry-specific content that attracts, retains and converts web visitors to active patients. You can get a better ROI for your marketing investment by reviewing, updating and optimizing your dental website from time to time.
In this article, we will discuss 12 easy-to-apply ways of improving your dental website and meeting your marketing goals. This essential website development and management tips will help you convert more patient leads and increase your revenue.
- Personalize your about page
- Save time by optimizing your appointment page
- Make it easy for patients to reach you through your contact page
- Showcase your social proof on your review/testimonial page
- Enhance your patient experience with a payment page
- Address patient’s inquiries and concerns on your FAQs page
- Stay connected with patients using Live Chat
- Educate and engage your patients using your blog page
- Optimize your dental website using Local Search
- Add Review Links so patients can rave about your dental practice online
- Secure your dental website
- Maintain HIPAA compliance
1. Personalize your about page
The About page is one of the most important pages on your dental practice’s website. This page is your opportunity to showcase your value proposition to your prospective patients. For patients, the choice of a dentist—or any healthcare provider—is a personal decision. They need to know that their dentist is credible, qualified and empathetic enough to meet their dental needs. On your about page, you should include details about your experience, professional certifications, awards, approach to dentistry and dental healthcare and any other details that distinguish you from your competition.
2. Save time by optimizing your appointment page
Every dental website should have an appointment/booking page. With an appointment page, you can save time spent scheduling appointments over the phone. Also, your patients can book appointments at their convenience and without having to call your office first. Your appointment page should include a form that asks only the essential questions you need to know about the patients. Any further information can be gathered, reviewed and confirmed by your team member after the booking has been made. Make sure the form on your appointment page is set up to automatically send patients, who complete the form, a confirmation email.
3. Make it easy for patients to reach you through your contact page
More than half of your prospective patients will visit your website before deciding to schedule an appointment with you. Many times, these patients may want to contact you to learn more information about your practice before scheduling an appointment. Your contact page should make it easy for these patients to reach you. This page should include your dental practice’s email address, office phone number, location and hours. For every means of communication that your patients have with you, you should set up an auto-responder in case you miss an email, phone call or text message.
4. Showcase your social proof on your reviews & testimonials page
Social proof refers to the content that highlights your current patients’ approval of your dental practice and service. You should have a page or section on your website that is dedicated to reviews and testimonials from your current patients. The average patient reads 10 reviews before deciding on a dentist or dental practice. Your review/testimonial page is your opportunity to show prospective patients your track record of providing quality dental healthcare service to patients like them. If you don’t have up to 10 reviews or if you want to get more reviews more often, Connect the Doc’s review tool can help you automatically generate authentic reviews from your current patients and promote them on the review boards that your prospective patients are viewing.
5. Enhance your patient experience with a payments page
Your payment page can help prospective patients make informed decisions by letting them know what methods of payment and insurance companies/coverages you typically accept. Your patients shouldn’t have to call you to get these details, it should be clearly stated on your website. If your dental practice has options for payment plans/scales, you should include those details on your payment page.
6. Address patients’ inquiries and concerns on your FAQs page
If you’re an experienced dentist, you are most likely used to answering similar questions from prospective and new patients time and time again. Instead of having the same conversations over the phone or replying to multiple emails about the same topic, address your patients’ frequently asked questions on your FAQs page. Also, if your dental practice is going through a transition or if external factors are affecting your patients’ accessibility to your practice, you can use your FAQs page to address those issues and concerns.
7. Stay connected with patients using Live Chat
Live Chat gives your dental website a competitive edge because it allows website visitors and patients to connect with your dental practice as soon as they visit your website. With Live Chat, your patients can be screened and qualified before appointments and get quick responses to their pressing questions.
At Connect the Doc, we developed Walter—a Live Chat tool that is powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning—to support dentists by automating the process of communicating with web visitors and prospective patients. Walter is designed to have smart conversations with patients, allow you or your team members to jump in and respond when it is convenient for you, and update patients on the status of your dental practice. With Walter, you can stay connected 24/7 to your patients and improve their experience with your dental practice.
8. Educate and engage patients using your blog
Successful dentists and dental practices understand and leverage the power of content marketing by including educational and engaging content on their dental website. Your blog page can serve as a key resource for prospective and current patients who are looking to learn more about your services and procedures or stay updated on dental healthcare tips.
By having a blog page on your dental website, you can create more awareness about your practice, build trust with patients as they continue to rely on you for valuable dental healthcare information and boost your search engine optimization efforts—which can lead to a higher ranking on Google’s Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).
9. Optimize your dental website for local search
In the past two years, “Near me” or “Close by” searches on Google has grown by 900%. This means that more patients are searching for dentists within their neighbourhood and immediate vicinity. When these Google searches are made, Google provides a listing of dental practices that are near the patient. Your dental website’s SEO determines the appearance and position of your dental practice on Google’s listing or SERPs.
You must review and optimize your dental website’s SEO from time to time. Use Google Analytics to learn more about how your web visitors and patients are interacting with your website. Revise your keyword selections and placements to match your patient’s engagement or interests. Update your website to include clear headings and subheadings, title tags and meta-tags, user-friendly navigation, images with alt-text, inbound links, and ultimately meet Google’s E-A-T standards.
There are over 200 ranking factors that can impact your position on Google’s SERPs. It may seem overwhelming to meet all these factors but you don’t have to do that alone. A Connect the Doc web manager, who is an expert in dental marketing, can work with you to review, optimize and update your dental website promptly. Contact us today to start working with a dedicated web manager. This vital step can save you time and money while increasing your patient leads and revenue.
10. Add Review Links so patients can rave about your dental practice online
With Connect the Doc’s review tool, you can automatically ask patients to leave feedback and reviews about your dental healthcare service through your website. This—along with social sharing links or icons—makes it easier for patients to spread the word about your dental practice within their social circles and online communities. The more patients rave about your dental practice, the more likely you are to attract more patients from their social circles.
11. Secure your dental website
Statistics show that healthcare organizations are one of the most affected by cybersecurity hacks and data breaches. In 2019, the estimated losses for the global healthcare industry due to cybersecurity issues was $25 billion. This has prompted several healthcare companies to increase their cybersecurity budgets from a maximum of 10% to about 25%.
Your dental website must be safe and secure for visitors and patients. Data breaches can hurt your brand and relationship with your patients. If patients have to log into your website, you should ensure your website requires strong passwords and two-factor authentication. You can also encrypt your dental website by downloading and installing an SSL certificate. If you don’t have a security certificate, Google may penalize your website and remove it from its ranking. More so, your website should include a right reserved and copyright statement.
12. Maintain HIPAA compliance
HIPAA stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. By complying with HIPAA, you ensure that the information your patients share through your dental website is secure and private. Your patients’ safety and satisfaction should be your priority and that starts with your website.
Connect the Doc can support you by ensuring your dental website complies with HIPAA. We can also work with you to maximize your marketing investments and optimize your dental website to attract more patient leads and increase your revenue. There are several more tips—such as adding videos to your website, improving your website’s accessibility features and having more white spaces on your website—that you will need to apply to truly get the most out of your dental website. Contact us today to start working with a dedicated web manager who will go through every single criterion that your dental website needs to meet so you can achieve your marketing goals.
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