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Medical marketing is part art, part science, but finding the right combo between the two pays big dividends! The medical industry is an extremely profitable one, and certain types of new patients could be immensely lucrative. That alone is a reason to invest substantially in medical marketing if you are a provider!
However, healthcare marketing comes with many unique challenges and obstacles that other industries don’t have to contend with. You will need to be cognizant of many details when marketing in healthcare, including insurance providers, HIPAA compliance, competing practices, and most current scientific treatment plans in your specialty.
Treating patients, managing billing, supervising staff and attending necessary medical conferences, AND staying current in medical marketing is a tall order! If you are a healthcare provider, managing your marketing can be a time suck, an important but demanding process that distracts from the areas you’re an expert in.
That’s the main reason that JSL Marketing recommends outsourcing your marketing needs. It’s just impossible to be a world-class health care provider, run a successful medical practice, and run successful medical marketing for your practice.
This approach ultimately frees up more time for you to focus on what you do best: caring for patients and running your practice. Per that approach, one of the first elements to examine when you are considering hiring external marketing help is your website.
Medical Websites Are Important
Medical websites are an important resource for your patients and potential new patients, but most practice websites are less than ideal. The result is a lose-lose situation for everyone involved. Your practice won’t receive the right quality and quantity of patients, and your patients won’t find what they’re looking for if your practice website is unimpressive or difficult to navigate.
Our medical website designers at JSL Marketing & Web Design have put together some helpful tips and tricks they’ve learned over their years in medical website design! This list will help you evaluate what is and isn’t working on your current website and will help you make an informed decision about a new medical website!
Medical Website Design Don’t
Don’t Use Industry Jargon in Your Medical Website Design
There’s a time and place to bust out the medical dictionary, but health care providers walk a balancing act between educating their website visitors and confusing their website visitors. Content writing is a vastly different beast from medical journal writing, so be sure to use an informal and friendly yet educational tone in whatever content you publish on your website.
Learn More About Website Copy Writing!
We’re not saying you should never use technical, medical terms on a medical website. Far from it! Just be sure that you’re choosing the right time and place to do so! For instance, a webpage about a particular type of overuse injury will naturally be more academic and technical in its language than your staff biography page.
However, if your current website comes across as stuffy and overly technical on most pages, you might want to consider hiring a content writer and web design team.
Don’t Forget to Humanize Your Practice Website
Many Americans have debilitating fears about healthcare. They’re searching for healthcare on Google for very particular reasons, and those reasons typically aren’t ‘sunshine and rainbows.’ A lot of the website visitors your practice receives are scared, nervous, and apprehensive.
Despite that, many medical practices don’t highlight the human nature of healthcare enough on their sites. For optimal medical website design, we always recommend including a biography page for your doctors and important staff members at your practice.
This is a great way to showcase accolades, medical association memberships, and expertise in the field, but it’s also a great way to give your practice a human side! We’d recommend highlighting the hobbies, personalities, and interests of your doctors and staff on these biography pages for the best medical website design.
Don’t Forget to Think like a Patient
If a white-collar worker begins to develop heel pain in the mornings, they will naturally not have the medical knowledge to accurately name their condition. Now, any podiatrist will immediately recognize heel pain first thing in the mornings as a telltale sign of plantar fasciitis. However, our white-collar worker probably isn’t typing “Plantar fasciitis” into Google when they show symptoms. Despite that reality, too many medical practice websites are centered around medical condition keywords and not the terms users are typing into Google. This is just one example of how medical websites often don’t serve the user’s needs.
Furthermore, many medical websites don’t make it easy to find the practice’s contact information, don’t display what types of insurances they accept, don’t advertise locations and hours, and don’t allow site visitors to download necessary practice forms pre-appointment. If your current medical website doesn’t make it easy for your website visitors, you may need to consider a redesign. An easy, stress-free, and quick user experience is great for your website’s SEO and great for your patients!
Medical Website Design Dos
Pay Attention to Your Website Graphic Design
Many medical websites still look like they were designed in 2011, and that’s a guaranteed way to lose site traffic. Your homepage doesn’t need to be a digital Mona Lisa, but it should be clean, professional-looking, and inviting for your website visitors. No one wants to see a doctor with an unprofessional-looking website, but too many practices are still using cookie-cutter web templates! Your medical website homepage should display your practice’s logo, pictures of the staff, and branded videos about the history and mission of the practice. These are sure-fire ways to engage your site visitors and draw them into your site.
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Make it Easy to Contact the Practice Through the Website
We’ve briefly talked about making your contact information visible, but savvy practices should go one step further. If you’ve entrusted your site’s redesign or upkeep to a smart web design agency, they’ve made sure every phone number on your website is clickable from a mobile device to ensure you’re getting the inbound calls you need! Ideally, your website could even incorporate an appointment scheduler for patients!
Contact Us Online to Discuss Website Scheduling Plug-Ins!
Highlight Real People’s Stories
Word-of-mouth is the best way to showcase the good you do for your patients. Take the testimonials and stories of your patients and add them to your website design for a powerful user website experience. These could be simple text testimonials on a webpage or a short video clip of the patient telling their story and experience with the practice. Regardless, it’s a great way to digitally prove you’re the real deal and that your patients trust you!
Medical Web Design From JSL Marketing & Web Design
Web design is tough, but it’s especially tough when you’re running a medical practice. Trust your medical web design needs to the marketing experts. JSL Marketing & Web Design is an award-winning digital marketing and web design agency, with locations in Dallas, TX, San Diego, CA, Austin, TX, and Grand Rapids, MI.
We’ve been helping small businesses grow and reach new customers for years and would love to help your practice reach new heights! Don’t just take our word for it – take the word of our medical clients!
“We have been very pleased with the quality of work, communication, and support from JSL Marketing. Their knowledge and expertise is top-notch, and we’ve seen great results with the SEO, content writing, and forward-thinking ideas”
-ABC Pediatrics