Should every business have its website? I would have answered negatively to this question a few years ago. Why a local hamburger booth with a website? Or a hairdresser where the same customers keep coming over and over again. However, everything is changing at a dizzying pace in marketing and is no longer relevant.
Fast food, hairdressers, and any other business where relationships between people are important should have their website. These days, the more responsive medical website is no longer just a choice of newer and better technology. Instead, it’s practically a standard worth sticking to.
Medical websites – the most important facts of 2022
According to CBOS research, as many as 70% of internet users look for information about doctors and medical services, 55% check online reviews before making an appointment, and 27% of users choose online registration. On the other hand, a study by the Medical University of Wrocław entitled “The role of the Internet in the patient-doctor relationship” showed that 48% of respondents look for information about their health online, usually on websites run by doctors or on thematic internet forums.
Interestingly, as many as 49% of respondents consider the information found on the Internet reliable. Research results show that the website allows not only to reach potential patients. It should also provide reliable information about health problems, treatment methods, procedures, etc.
Be available on smartphones and tablets
According to the Digital in 2022 report, 52% of users browse websites using mobile devices, and 43% on computers. However, the constant development of technology allows us to believe that traditional web browsing will gradually decrease compared to tablets and mobile phones, especially in the B2C sector, i.e., selling goods to end customers. Such a recipient is, among other things, a patient interested in medical services.
Sample analytics of a small plastic surgery clinic – October 2019
The research results clearly show that having a mobile medical website is key in reaching potential patients and effective marketing activities. View your website on your smartphone. If anything in what’s displayed is not working properly or scaling properly – it’s time to change that. Why is it important?
- You can reach more potential patients.
- You will stay ahead of the competition and gain an advantage over it. Probably some of your colleagues or friends of doctors are still at the stage of old technology. If not – it’s high time to catch up with your competitors
- You will increase the visibility of your website in search engines because Google has been strongly promoting mobile websites for several years. Currently, a mismatch with smartphones (lack of responsiveness) is treated by Google as a mistake.
Responsive medical side. Focus on details
It is worth remembering important factors influencing the perception of your website by users. When designing your website, remember your target group and adapt the design, content, etc. For users of mobile devices, the most important are:
Intuitive navigation. Try to keep to the standards you see on other sites that work properly on your phone. Repeatability is recommended for navigating, i.e., reaching the most important content on the website. If you are too original in this regard, you force the user to learn something new. This does not always make direct sense. User experience (UX), i.e., the user’s experience, largely decides whether to stay longer on the page or abandon it looking for another, where navigation will be more convenient and intuitive.
Understandable and friendly content
You view medical websites design on the phone completely different from those prepared only for a computer.
Their content should be profiled so that the user can use them as much as possible.
Avoid huge blocks of text. Separate paragraphs with pictures or markers that will allow your eyes to rest from the continuous text stream. Don’t write too long, complex sentences.
Quick access to the most important information. It is worth considering what the user will be looking for on your website. Perhaps it will be the prices of services.
Perhaps descriptions of medical services. Make it easy to navigate and access individual texts using touch navigation if you run a blog. In addition, you must enter an internal search engine on the website.
Easy contact with the facility
The contact page and other places where the user can quickly communicate with you are important elements that require refinement for a responsive website. More important will be telephone contact and the native way of linking the telephone number.
So that from every part of the site, it is possible to select the number in a maximum of 3 taps (finger clicks) and connect with you or your registration.
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A structure friendly to your patients
A mobile medical website design requires a logical and intuitive organization
of information. The user should easily navigate between subpages and find the most important information. The clear layout of the website allows your potential patients to smoothly move from general information about your practice, through the price list of services, to the FAQ or the method of contact.
Your potential patient should be able to easily find information about your achievements, services offered, prices of individual treatments, the possibility of making an appointment or receiving answers to additional questions, and current events in the life of your facility. In addition, a clear layout of the website and easy navigation increase your chances of attracting users to your services.
Try not to create multi-level structures of your website pages. Then, perhaps, the user can easily reach them using a computer or laptop. However, for a person using a smartphone, the fewer complications, the better.
Patient understandable content
Your patients do not have medical knowledge, so you should ensure comprehensible and user-friendly content. In addition, your potential patients want to obtain reliable information about their health problems, treatment methods, treatments, and possible complications. In one of the articles, I described the types of content on the medical website and their role in marketing activities.
The company’s blog and interesting infographics create your professional image, provide reliable information and naturally promote your services. Data visualization, i.e., more and more popular infographics, helps explain difficult medical issues to your potential patients in an accessible way. Take advantage of the fact that visual information accounts for as much as 90% of the information reaching the human brain, as I mentioned before.
Running a regular corporate blog will provide professional and reliable knowledge – as many as 70% of users look for information about health and medical services on websites run by doctors. When browsing your website on mobile phones or tablets, your potential patients look for specific and understandable information about health and your services. Meet their expectations. Write about a healthy lifestyle, treatments, and research that applies to them. Interesting articles about your daily work can encourage new patients to visit your office.
Price list of medical services on the phone
This is sometimes the most difficult subpage to implement. Especially if your price list is complicated and extensive. Using a link with a PDF where 150 price-list items would be compiled in an endless table is probably the worst possible idea. Instead, think carefully about breaking down your offer into logical sections.
Remember that not everyone has a large screen phone. Multistage tables formatted to the correct width in a mobile phone will be a better solution. Tactile navigation in the price list should encourage you to review it.
Make contact information visible
Your potential patients looking for information about medical services may have an additional question or be willing to make an appointment for a consultation or visit. Make sure you have several contact options and display them appropriately. If you want to leave a contact form on the website, remember the ease of entering a message. Don’t make a huge form with 20 panes and options. Use multi-step forms instead. A small smartphone screen allows you to display little information simultaneously legibly.
Remember about the map and linking your website with your Google My Business listing, where you will provide your exact address. Google will verify your location. More and more people (including your patients) use this solution like a GPS service – take care of voice inquiries about your medical company. The Google Assistant will lead your patients straight to your office, thanks to this.
What should your mobile website contain?
Let’s summarize the most important information about the content of the website. A well-designed, user-friendly site includes:
- General information about your specialization professional achievements. Also, those about the scope of services provided, your staff, organization of your facility, opening hours, etc.
- Detailed information about the procedures performed, tests, consultations, and the opinions of your patients and the so-called case study without the use of personal data.
- Price list of the most important or all services provided.
- News from the life of your facility – information about new equipment, extending the scope of treatments performed, participation in training courses and symposia.
- Company blog with interesting publications on health issues, treatments performed, current trends in medicine.
- Information on how to contact us.
Summary
A responsive medical website effectively supports your marketing activities and professional image on the web. You will probably need professional support from a specialized medical marketing agency to design it well and fill it with the right content. I wouldn’t be myself if I didn’t mention at this point that it’s great because you are currently on the blog of such an agency. I invite you to contact me. Call us or write to us.
