In today’s web-friendly world, more than 70 percent of patients go on the web before they pick up the phone. Think about that for a minute. Every seven out of 10 people that walk in your office reviewed everything they could find out about you before even considering scheduling an appointment with you. That’s why I cannot stress the importance of a great, dynamic website for your practice.

Notice that I said “great.” Good just won’t cut it when there are literally dozens of competitors offering the exact same service you do within a few miles radius. Your website says a lot about who you are and what you do; it’s a critical component to your overall marketing and communications strategy. If you want to put your best foot forward, you have to start with a quality website that’s up to date, easy to understand and offers patients all the information they could ever want and then some – just in case.

Essentially, your website should walk patients through every step of the process – from getting to know you to billing to directions and even news about your specialty.

When crafting your strategy to increase traffic to your website, and ultimately bring patients into the door, here are a few key things to remember:

• Updates and layout matter. Your site should be easy to navigate and you should have updates so people know you’re still relevant and in business. Even if they are simple 200 word updates every week or two about something going on in the practice – post them on your site. Note: once every week or two is the bare minimum, however I recommend you update the site more often along with your social media accounts (another article entirely). If people check for updates and see your news section was last updated in March of 2009, they understandably will get a little worried that you’re closed or just not very good at what you do. Regular updates also help keep your practice high in the search rankings, without spending additional dollars to get there.
• Design is key. Patients should feel an immediate trust when they visit your site. They should have confidence in your ability and a lot of that, for better or worse, comes from how pretty it looks. Be sure to include calming colors and plenty of images of various demographics and age ranges so patients can easily identify with a particular group.
• Monitor traffic. This is the easiest way to know if your efforts are paying off plain and simple. If you put a landing address in three publications this month and traffic to that page increased, you know your efforts worked. If they didn’t, invest your advertising dollars elsewhere.
• Include contact info in the footer and header. As simple as it sounds, this is huge. We’re all lazy and if we decide to pick up the phone, we want to see your office number right away, not have to search for it on a particular page. If it’s not everywhere, people will just give up and not call.

The more traffic your site earns, the higher it will go in search rankings and therefore more people will find you. Here are a few simple and free tips to help drive traffic to your site. 

• Use social media. Sites like Facebook and Twitter are simple to use and help establish rapport and connect you to patients in an informal setting. The idea is to have that relationship start here and migrate back to your site.
• Create a blog. This goes back to updating your site often. Write about some common things you see or questions you answer. Start a blog and update it often with topics that help to position you as the expert.
• Promote your site. Put it on appointment reminders, invoices, even paint it on your office walls somewhere. It works – when patients are in your lobby waiting to be called back, if they see the site, they’ll visit. You never know where that click may lead or what service they may become interested in while sitting, literally, at your doorstep.

Of course these strategies are only a small part of what it takes to have a successful web presence. Oh,  and don’t forget your web presence is only a small part of your overall marketing and public relations plan but the benefits can be seen and measured almost immediately. Get clicking!

Jennifer Thompson is a Central Florida small business owner and serves as president of Insight Marketing Group, focusing on medical office marketing and community relations. In this capacity she is responsible for developing and implementing the long-term strategic vision for the overall organization including publishing the company’s community-based monthly news magazine and hosting the company’s weekly small business networking group. She can be reached via email at jennifer@insightmg.com.

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