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Medical Website Design and Development

medical-website-design

8 tips to help your practice thrive when it comes to medical website design and development

We’re living in a time when online presence is everything. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, online needs have strengthened even further. People are online for everything - telehealth, health information, symptom checking, retail shopping, even their groceries.

 

As a medical practice, your online presence is no longer an option; it’s a necessity. You hold the crucial information that so many people need, within the walls of your business. This information needs to be available for your prospective patients to be able to find online.

 

That’s why medical website design and development is so important - it's more than a healthcare marketing tool. If you’re not sure whether your website is up to scratch, we can help. This post will help explain everything you need to know about medical website design and development and how you can make the most of it to attract, engage and inform your patients.

Website Design and Development innovations

The way we do healthcare is changing. The pandemic has reduced the availability of in-person services and forced the health community to move online. Medical innovations are on the rise every day, and if you’re not a part of the explosive wave of online information, you are missing out on potential patients.

 

Medical websites have needed to quickly pivot and rethink how they deliver information. New medical website design and development strategies have evolved. While the pandemic has forced the medical field to be more present online, there was a shift in the area of medical website design and development even before the pandemic. A large percentage of patients sought doctors online (47%), online reviews were already impacting patient decisions and the majority of people were already turning to the internet to find medical information.

 

It only makes sense to continue to move in the direction of improving your online presence. Your online presence is an important part of your brand and reputation as a healthcare provider.

Tips to Improve Medical Website and Design Development

To ensure your medical website is designed to attract new patients and keep existing ones, here are some practical ways to improve it:

 

1. Design and build with the user (your patients) front of mind

Easy navigation is crucial to website design. If users come to your site and aren’t able to find what they’re looking for because they don’t know how to navigate your site, that’s a problem.

To provide a user-friendly experience here is some advice:

  • Verify that your most relevant categories are placed in the main navigation bar
  • Eliminate multi-level drop-down menus. They’re not mobile-friendly
  • Use standard titles for menu elements such as About, Services, Team, and Contact
  • Create user-friendly calls to action

User friendly websites are better for search engines too.

 

2. Integrate an online booking platform like HotDoc

It’s important that a patient has the ability to book an appointment at a time to match their busy schedule. Many medical websites now provide the option for patients to do online bookings for their upcoming appointments, and you can have that too. You can also send reminders of the appointments by email or SMS. That simplifies the process for everyone. Patients won’t have to call in and be on hold forever, and your reception team won’t have to use valuable time trying to schedule appointment over the phone.

 

3. Introduce your team

Allow future patients the opportunity to be familiar with your care providers. You can do this with a dedicated team page. Visitors should be able to locate a doctor by name or unique experience. Create an overview of each practitioner, with a photo, details about their qualifications and experience, areas of special interest and availability.

 

4. Add a fees / pricing page

Having a page that provides information about appointment fees is a good idea. Pricing is an important consideration for many families when it comes to healthcare.  Provide information about the types of insurance your practice accepts.

 

5. Combine a map and contact details

When planning the space for your contact details, make sure that visitors easily understand how to get in touch with you. Typically, contact details go in the header and footer, and on a separate Contact page. An embedded Google map shows patients where to find you and allows them to click on the map to easily get directions from their home or workplace.

6. Ensure security of data

As the need for online data grows, and patients are depending on medical practices to provide them with the best in medical website design and development, there is a need for assurance of the security of patient information. To comply with privacy legislation, ensure there is a valid SSL certificate on your website for encrypting the data sent through contact forms.

 

7. Pay attention to accessibility

Ensuring accessible digital content is a critical requirement for medical practices to support people with disability. So, it’s important to ensure medical websites are designed and developed in a way that allows them to be accessible and usable by everyone, including users with disabilities. At the most basic level, designing a website for accessibility involves considering factors like:

  • Readability - is text large enough and easy to read
  • Images - use of alt text to describe image content
  • Headings - do they help users easily scan content and understand the structure of the page
  • Colour - is the contrast ratio adequate between text and backgrounds
  • Video - do videos have captions

8. Don't neglect website speed

Websites need to be fast and your website visitors will appreciate your web pages loading quickly whether they're viewing your site from a laptop, iPad or smartphone. Website speed is easily impacted by poor design and development and can be a source of frustration for patients when they want information now. Tools such as GT Metrix and Google Page Speed Insights can provide comprehensive data to identify speed bottlenecks. The following are renowned for slowing down websites:

  • Poor quality hosting
  • Image sliders
  • Large, uncompressed images
  • Messy website code

How LocalMD Can Help

If online marketing is important to the success of your practice (and no doubt it is), choose an expert in medical web design and development. Be sure that your strategy includes user friendly web development, an intuitive content management system (like WordPress) and pays attention to accessibility, security and speed.

 

A website is a 24/7 patient hub and a critical business asset and we work with practice management teams to ensure website projects are handled with care, attention to detail and professionalism.

 

Visit our medical websites page today and book a free initial consultation.

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Maz Hancock

Maz Hancock

I'm the Founder and Director of Local MD. I love helping medical professionals increase their revenue by increasing their visibility online, so they can positively impact the lives of more patients. I do this through done-for-you websites and marketing, education and consulting.

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Google Rating
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Local MD
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Simon Wilson
Simon Wilson
19:19 12 Nov 21
Maz and the team have been very proactive with suggestions around our new website for directaccessvasectomy. They set out the steps clearly and although Covid has been a real pain we look forward to the next steps around some SEO updates together.
Kath Hinde
Kath Hinde
01:37 29 Sep 21
I engaged Maz to help me communicate with Google to get the verification code I was having trouble getting, and then a once-off GMB optimisation of my page. She was wonderful, and in a very short time had transformed my GMB page with content, photos, and all the bells and whistles needed to raise our profile. I am very glad I engaged her services and thoroughly recommend you do the same
roovawal
roovawal
03:06 27 Sep 21
Our two large Medical Centre's have been working with Maz for many years now. I absolutely cannot fault her professionalism, promptness and skill. Our website is kept looking great, any changes (and they have been constant over Covid!) are dealt with at lightning speed and there are often improvements suggested which make a huge difference. Great job Maz (and colleague Andrea). We really appreciate everything you do for us and highly recommend Local MD to anyone else.
Peter Holsman
Peter Holsman
07:02 24 Sep 21
"Covid arrived and my patient numbers dropped dramatically. It was clear that I needed to market my clinic a lot better if my clinic was to survive and preferably prosper in the future.Maz showed me how my website was largely "invisible" to google and my potential client base. It turned out that most of my posts weren't working.Maz was incredibly helpful in understanding my business and coming up with an attractive new website that engaged with my patients.The feedback from my patients has been terrific.I absolutely recommend her services for anyone looking to build a new website or optimise their GMB profile."
See all reviewsWrite a review
powered by Google
Google Rating
5.0
Local MD
Local MD
5.0
Simon Wilson
Simon Wilson
19:19 12 Nov 21
Maz and the team have been very proactive with suggestions around our new website for directaccessvasectomy. They set out the steps clearly and although Covid has been a real pain we look forward to the next steps around some SEO updates together.
Kath Hinde
Kath Hinde
01:37 29 Sep 21
I engaged Maz to help me communicate with Google to get the verification code I was having trouble getting, and then a once-off GMB optimisation of my page. She was wonderful, and in a very short time had transformed my GMB page with content, photos, and all the bells and whistles needed to raise our profile. I am very glad I engaged her services and thoroughly recommend you do the same
roovawal
roovawal
03:06 27 Sep 21
Our two large Medical Centre's have been working with Maz for many years now. I absolutely cannot fault her professionalism, promptness and skill. Our website is kept looking great, any changes (and they have been constant over Covid!) are dealt with at lightning speed and there are often improvements suggested which make a huge difference. Great job Maz (and colleague Andrea). We really appreciate everything you do for us and highly recommend Local MD to anyone else.
Peter Holsman
Peter Holsman
07:02 24 Sep 21
"Covid arrived and my patient numbers dropped dramatically. It was clear that I needed to market my clinic a lot better if my clinic was to survive and preferably prosper in the future.Maz showed me how my website was largely "invisible" to google and my potential client base. It turned out that most of my posts weren't working.Maz was incredibly helpful in understanding my business and coming up with an attractive new website that engaged with my patients.The feedback from my patients has been terrific.I absolutely recommend her services for anyone looking to build a new website or optimise their GMB profile."
See all reviewsWrite a review
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