Planning to create an online presence as a dentist? In that case, having a website is essential to your plan for your dental clinic, especially in today’s digital world.
Patients today value convenience above all else, so dentists need to fulfill this need. There’s hardly anybody who wants to visit clinics just to schedule an appointment. A dental website helps in this regard while also allowing patients to view all information regarding their treatment. Plus, it aids dentists like yourself in compiling and keeping crucial patient data.
Simply put, you’re missing out on a massive opportunity if you don’t have a website for your dental clinic.
Why Build a Dental Website?
A dental website can assist patients with queries, procedure research, and possibly even patient portal access. However, the main goal of a dental office website is to encourage potential new patients to call (or click) and make an appointment with you.
Every marketing effort you currently do for your dental facility should be the focal point of your dental website. Dental pay-per-click initiatives (via Google ads, for instance) will attract visitors to your dental website alongside Facebook ads for dentists, online reputation and reviews, and even the occasional billboard or print ads.
Your website’s job is to quickly and easily convert visitors to new patients. Visitors will simply click on the next dental office in their search results if your website doesn’t provide them with the information they’re looking for, losing you a potential business.
Benefits of Having a Dental Website
A website for your dental clinic can open up a world of growth and possibilities, especially when it allows you to be visible locally and online. The more information people can access about you and your practice, the more likely they will schedule an appointment with you. The trust a potential patient will have in your services will increase if your website is attractive and professionally designed.
Additionally, the benefits listed below are yours to enjoy if your dental clinic runs its own website:
Show the Treatments You Offer
Patients benefit when you can describe every service you offer to them on your dental website. Instead of calling your clinic for information, the person can gain have such useful information at the palm of their hands, literally. This benefits you because fewer enquiry calls will free up your phone lines for emergency calls.
Create a Dentist Profile
When looking for a dentist to treat them for any dental condition, people will want to confirm the dentist’s reliability. A dentist profile on your website is crucial as it fosters trust among new patients while also giving you the chance to describe how you and your clinic operates, your educational background, your areas of expertise, and other things. This increases the ease with which new patients schedule appointments with you.
Add Photos and Videos
The ability to post photos and videos on your website, whether they are of your clinic and its employees or your treatments, is a huge advantage because it encourages potential new patients to trust you. When people see proof of your treatments and the outcomes you can promise, it greatly increases their trust in your clinic.
Post-Treatment Reviews
Another excellent benefit from websites is that it allows you to attract new clients by way of testimonials from your current or past patients. They serve as proof of your facility’s competency, especially when the reviews highlight the fantastic service and effective dental treatments patients experience under your care.
Online Booking Feature
Online appointment booking is a wonderful feature you can add to your dental website. This draws in those with more demanding schedules who may want to schedule a dental appointment with you without having to make a call. This is advantageous because some people might be reluctant to call your office, and this can possibly increase your current pool of potential new patients.
Show Your Location
Including your clinic’s location is very helpful because it enables the patient to see exactly where your clinic is and how far it is from their home. This can also increase the number of people who schedule appointments online because it demonstrates that you are a legitimate dental care office. Since people use Google Maps when searching, having your clinic’s location on the said service (on your website) can help it rank highly on Google. This can be very helpful if you have relevant keywords and location included there, too.
How to Build a Professionally Designed Dental Website?
After landing on a website, the average person decides whether they’re interested in a product or service in less than 15 seconds. Just getting potential patients to click a link to your website isn’t enough. Once they are on your dental website, you must do all you can to capture their attention and hold their interest.
At Digital Rescue, we enable our dental clients to get more patients from their websites. We’ll cover the most important factors to consider when building an effective and professionally designed dental website.
Ensure Easy Navigation
Most people concur that simple and easy navigation is an essential website element. And it is a perfectly rational conclusion. It is annoying to sift through an entire website for the information you need, after all. Visitors are more likely to navigate through a dental website that’s simple to use, especially when information is presented logically and intuitively. Your menu should have a logical flow, and your search bar should be simple to access.
Invest in Professional Design
Many of your potential patients will form their first impression of your facility based on your website. So it makes sense to invest in a professional design. A professional design guarantees your website’s usability, aesthetic appeal, and positive user experience. A great dental website design includes simple fonts, clear headings, little clutter, and a consistent colour scheme.
Prioritise the “Must-Have” Pages
These pages ought to be present on every dental website. They can make your dental office stand out from the competition when properly utilised. The following pages are essential:
Service Page – This is where you answer your potential patients’ questions and where you can indicate all the treatments or dental services that you offer.
All pertinent information about your services should be included on the services pages. These pages ought to include FAQs regarding your services. If potential patients can’t quickly and easily find the answers to their questions, they’re likely to give up on the idea of getting their dental treatments from you.
About Us – This is where you introduce your team and build trust with site visitors. You can build rapport on this page and answer why your services are better than competitors.
Your dental team should be introduced here, too. It’s where you also explain the goals of your dental office. This page is a fantastic place to describe how your clinic operates.
Contact Us – Here, your existing and prospective patients can easily find your contact information, business hours, and appointment tools.
Prospective clients should be able to get in touch with you through your “contact us” page, whether it be by phone, email, or other means. It should contain information about parking and your clinic’s hours of operation.
Include Quality and Well-written Copy
Working on the design components of your dental website is exciting and we don’t blame you for investing a lot of thought into it. However, the success of your site depends on its content. After all, your clinic’s storyline will essentially be told through the copy, which also serves as the primary factor of your website’s Google search rankings.
A well-written, high-quality copy should be simple to read. It has clear headings that divide it into easily digestible sections. Prospective patients are more likely to view your dental office as reliable and professional if your copy is flawless and free of spelling and grammar errors, too.
Appropriately Placed, Clear Call-to-Action
Visitors are converted into patients on a successful dental website. Site visitors should be encouraged to take action as they go through your pages. The call-to-action buttons that are strategically placed throughout your website should help achieve this.
Since not everyone will want to connect with your clinic in the same way, it is crucial to include a variety of call-to-action buttons. Include prompts like “learn more,” “make an appointment,” and “call us,” for instance.
Optimised User Experience and Loading Speed
The user experience is improved by a responsive web design, which is why it is a highly recommended approach. For well-optimised website designs, the following two elements are necessary:
- The capacity to adjust to the browsing device’s specifications [i.e. computer to mobile]
- Fast page loading speed
According to Google, most people use mobile devices to access search engines. This may be why Google switched to a mobile-first indexing back in the middle of 2019. In other words, you risk losing business if site visitors or potential patients are unable to access your website or view your content properly on their mobile device.
Websites created by Digital Rescue are designed from the ground up to be responsive and quick to load. We take pride in having produced many of Australia’s fastest websites by combining cutting-edge WordPress optimisation techniques and fast web hosting servers.
Apply Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Although SEO isn’t everything, it is an important tactic for achieving a high ranking on search engines like Google. TopRankings, our sister brand, offers SEO services for dentists. Together, we help ensure that the following components are taken into consideration so you end up with an SEO-optimised platform:
- Target Keywords
- URLs
- Meta Descriptions
- Quality Scores
- Relevant Contents
Use Quality Photos and Videos
According to numerous studies, a third of businesses cite photos and videos as one of the most crucial types of content for their marketing. Although it is not necessary, videos can help your dental website stand out. Professional headshots and staff biographies should be included on your website’s “about page” or “meet the team” page.
High-quality photos of your dental office can enhance the written content on your website and help visitors get a sense of the atmosphere in your clinic, too.
Set Up a Reliable Online Booking Feature
Time is wealth in 2021 and convenience is essential. This may be why patients prefer to book appointments online nowadays. Your patients should have the option to book an appointment online, whether you use dental software with an online booking portal or prefer a straightforward embedded booking form. You can even have them complete the necessary paperwork before their appointments if you want such a function included.
Publish Consistent and Updated Blogs
It’s no secret that Google favours websites with consistent updates on pertinent, SEO-friendly content. A regularly updated dental blog post also serves as a resource for your target patients. It allows them to learn about various dental procedures and good oral hygiene. Building authority in the online dental community is a breeze when you run a regularly updated blog on your website.
Build Your Dental Website With Us!
Are you ready to create a dental website to convert visitors into new patients?
Digital Rescue is the dental web design agency you can trust in Melbourne. Together with our sister brand, TopRankings, we have built a proven track record of delivering professional websites that employ effective SEO strategies. Reach out to our friendly team today for an obligation-free chemistry call.
