(1) Increase new patient activations:
If you are like most practices (and businesses in general), the number one reason to build a dental website is to grow their company with new patient activations. A properly designed dental website will enable you to do that and more.
But how does it help you attract new patients? Two ways, first, on page optimization. You must use the proper title tags, metadata, headers and descriptions to let the search engines index what terms you want prospects to use to find you. For example, say you provide a lot of Invisalign invisible braces, if you devote a page to how you go about treating cases, with tips, images and helpful information, you increase the likelihood of loading high in the search rankings when someone searches for that topic. And they do, my latest records shows they search for the keyword term “Invisalign” 135,000 times a month.
The second involves getting new patients to your website using web marketing. You may write a blog about Invisalign; send out invisalign before and after photos on social media, advertise online to go to your website to download a whitepaper on Invisalign or offer an online Invisalign offer to patients on your website.
(2) More Treatment from existing patients:
A helpful, fresh up-to-date dental website will be visited often by existing patients. Here lies the perfect opportunity to notify them of all the services that you offer and even add a little motivation for them to ask about it the next time they are in. And to mention the site for a VIP offer or download an offer to bring in so you can measure the effectiveness.
A website has lots of room to explain a treatment as well as the benefit of receiving the treatment. Your site navigation should make it easy to find the information a patient is looking for, if there is too many navigation choices, you can lose them.
(3) Ease the burden of calls to the front desk asking routine questions:
A well planned website will make it easy for patients to find the information they are looking for. Whether it is services you provide, insurance you carry, hours, contact information, photos and bios of the doctor, it should be able to be accessed quickly. If done well, it can reduce the number of routine calls looking to get answers to Frequently Asked Questions.
(4) Provide forms for patients to download and complete beforehand:
Another great way to add a convenience for your patients and take some burden off your front office, is to provide health forms online. HIPAA forms and even insurance information forms can be added for the patient to download ahead of time and bring in prior to their appointment, which will save time for your patient and your front office.
(5) Establish yourself and your practices as the expert:
By adding a blog to your website, you can discuss many different matters of interest about your practice to patients and prospects. As well as, establishing yourself as an expert on technical matters. As blog ideas you may want to include topics such as, information on different treatments you provide, services you offer, changes in personnel, new policies, even local or community involvement.
If you are in the process of designing a new dental website, you might find my paper on 20 dental website design tips helpful.
