The Proceptive Perspective Dental Blog

Greetings! I managed to pull myself away from my research in the labs in order to share with you some tips on how the design of your dental website can affect your new patient conversions and the overall success of your site. Even if you have an established Internet marketing and optimization campaign in place, leading to targeted visitors to your dental website, these design strategies will ensure that you convert this traffic into new patients for your practice as well as save your staff time answering the same questions over and over. Enjoy!

~ The Professor

10 Essential Elements

• Easy to Understand and Use Site Navigation
  
• Complete List of Dental Services You Provide
  
• Prominent Contact Information
  
• Complete Contact Information
  
• Practice & Staff Photos
  
• Hours & Location
  
• Dental Insurance and Payment Options
  
• Patient Forms
  
• Frequently Asked Questions
  
• Call to Action
  

Easy to Understand and Use Site Navigation – Complicated website navigation is one of the top reasons website visitors will leave a website and look for another more straightforward site. When it is so easy to click the back button and go to the next website, most visitors are not going to waste their time frustrated by a complicated site navigation that makes it difficult to find what they want.

Your site navigation is essentially the roadmap for your web site, which is why you should strive to provide your visitors with a guide that is easy to read and follow. A dental website that is set up with simple and clear navigation will see dramatically higher lead generation levels than a site with a confusing navigation system.

Complete List of Dental Services You Provide – One of your visitors might need implant work, the other teeth whitening, while another might need a cavity filled. Are you the right dentist for them? These visitors already know the service they are looking for; it is your job to let them know you can provide it for them.

Think of your list of dental services as entrées in a restaurant. If these entrees are not listed in the menu, how can the patrons order them? The same can be said for your dental services. If your visitor is looking for a Veneer service, make it easy for them to find that service on your site, without having to search randomly through all your website pages. If they don’t see the particular service they are looking for, they will most likely go to a website that does.

Prominent Contact Information – Web Surfers can be fickle when it comes to finding the information that they want, and when they want it. They are more likely to click the back button on their web browser and find another site than to try and hunt for that particular web page that contains the buried information they are looking for. By providing prominent contact information throughout your site, you are inviting them to contact you for assistance instead of having them turn away in frustration.

Complete Contact Information – Do you provide your phone number throughout your website? Fax number? Is there a contact email or form that is easy to find? How about your office location?

Most patients will want to call or send your staff an email, but not all. Providing complete and up to date contact information that includes a fax number and address will ensure that each visitor to your website can get in contact with you in the manner that is most convenient for them. (Having this information on your website is also valuable for getting local listings in the search engines)

Practice & Staff Photos – Having pictures of you, your office and your dental staff will allow your website visitors to make a personal connection that goes beyond the internet and becomes more tangible. Going to the dentist can be a anxious experience for some; seeing the smiling faces of you and your staff can help quell that anxiety and make it more comfortable contacting you for an appointment.

Hours & Location – Make it easy for new patients to find the location of your dental office and your hours of operation. If they are looking for your location, then most likely they have already decided they want to visit your practice. Providing a detailed map or a link to one online that shows where your dental office is located helps visitors understand where you are how to get to you. Additionally, maps that can be printed down are great so your patients can take and have with them while they are driving.

Featuring your location will also allow new patients to find you without your staff having to answer these questions over the phone or through email. Dental patients are just like any other business customer in regards to wanting access to simple information without the hassle of having to call and speak to someone for it.

Dental Insurance and Payment Options – Listing on your website the complete list of dental insurance providers that you accept might not be practical. However, you should consider elaborating as much as possible about your insurance and financial requirements.

It is always nice for patients to read more than just basic financial statements like “We currently accept thousands of private care insurance plans.” You can start by asking your front office staff for a list of the top 10 or 20 most common insurance plans that patients inquire about. Imagine how much time your staff will save over the course of a year not having to repeat the same information over and over again.

Patient Forms – By providing patient forms on your website that the patient can fill in and send through email or print down, and fax or bring with them, you will shorten the amount of time that they spend in the waiting room and help insure that they have all of the information that you will need for their initial visit.

Frequently Asked Questions – You may want to take some time to ask your front desk staff the questions they frequently answer during the course of the day. Take those questions and answer them on a frequently asked question (FAQ) section on your website. This will not only save your staff the time it takes to answer these questions, but it will also quickly provide your visitors with the answers they are looking for.

Call to Action - Sometime visitors to your website need to be told what to do or how to do it. Calls to Action will lead your visitors to fill out a contact form, call for an appointment, or send an email question to your practice. Whatever it is that you want your visitors to do, your Call to Actions can lead them there.

Cheers,

~ The Professor