Before you consider improving your existing website, it’s important to design it in such a way that visitors are encouraged to choose your hospital over your competitors.
Introduction To Design
It’s important to remember that people have little patience when it comes to websites slow-loading in their browsers. If the information they’re looking for isn’t within easy clicking distance, they’ll be gone almost immediately. Reduced website traffic will ultimately lead to fewer conversions and potentially lost revenue.
The Golden Website Rule: Make it Responsive!
In this era of digital marvels, it’s not surprising that around 62% of people with smartphones used them to find out more about a medical condition over the past year. If your website doesn’t automatically scale to the size of a tablet or smartphone screen, it’s stuck in the Dark Ages.
To create a ‘vibe’ that you’re at the cutting edge of medical advances, you must ensure your website is completely responsive to whatever device it’s being viewed in. It’s also crucial from an SEO perspective as Google looks more favorably on mobile-responsive websites when ranking them in search results.
The Four Design Elements
Here are four design elements that we may leverage to encourage more conversions from website visitor to patient.
Use Video to Increase Conversion Rates
By placing just one video on your website, it has the potential to increase conversion rates by as much as 25%. Healthcare Marketing Consultants have an in-house video production team ready to work with you on producing grade-A video content to attract potential clients, or even to produce informative patient videos about proper nutrition, what to expect from surgery, or proper aftercare upon leaving the hospital. The most important aspect of the video is the information it gives, that it is relevant to your hospital’s services, as well as being personable and of high quality.
A few examples of videos that can be used on your site:
Make Sure Your Website’s Content Has Relevance
The best way to make sure you are relevant to your audience is for us to provide top quality SEO oriented website content in a clear and cohesive structure. If your hospital has a specialty, we will introduce it briefly on your homepage, then link to a specially built section for it so we highlight such a specialty in its own “showroom.” If your current website is condensing your services into extensive specialties on the first page your website traffic sees, they may be put off by thinking they’re in the wrong place for the information they’re looking for.
The home page should follow a specific market proven formula to attract attention, inform, intrigue and convert website visitors. Healthcare marketing consultants can provide that. Your website’s homepage layout is essentially the online entrance to your facilities for your new patients. In your brick and mortar facility, there was no doubt great architectural thought and expertise that went into designing the entrance to your hospital, it’s parking structures, and how traffic would flow into, and out of your facility.
Think of your website the same way. Would you want someone who wasn’t a specialized architect working on the designs for your hospital’s structure? The same should go for your online efforts. A specialist who knows the health care industry inside and out is going to be your best option for a successful branded website design.
Your Website Should be Easy to Navigate
According to Neilson Media Research, a person decides within 10 seconds whether they will stay on a website or go elsewhere. That means we haven’t got very long to make a good impression. It makes sense then that if your home page is too busy, too cheap looking, has poor quality images and has no definable structure, you won’t be attracting the ‘sticky’ traffic you need.
It’s not just your home page that matters. If a visitor is quickly able to see and navigate to where the information they’re seeking is, they’re more likely to stick around and find out more.
Creating Incentives for Engagement
It’s all for nothing if you have a great looking website that is packed with useful information if your traffic doesn’t know what to do with it. If there aren’t clear calls to action (CTA) offering the opportunity to find out more, your website isn’t going to earn its keep.
A CTA can be anything from a button to a question to answering a poll on your website, all of which can be clicked to get the information they’re looking for. These can be used to find out who has visited your website and requested more information. Depending on our marketing goals, this information can be used for remarketing down the line, or simply utilized to offer a more personalized experience next time they visit.
Various CTAs to Leverage:
Conclusion
Over the last few years, Google has updated its algorithm significantly to enhance its user experience (UX) and now websites are required to meet stringent criteria to be properly ‘seen’ by the search engine. The emphasis is not only on the relevance and quality of your website’s content but also on ease of navigation, which includes mobile responsiveness. The idea is that the highest ranked websites will be those giving the best answers to search queries. By hiring some of the best professionals in the business, you’ll ensure your website is as patient-friendly as your hospital is, while significantly improving the number of patients walking through your doors.
