Are you a doctor or a health-related professional? Yes? Then keep reading because this post will be very interesting for you since I will talk to you about what web pages for doctors and health professionals should be like.
Suffice it to say here
that we live in the third decade of the 21st century, and people's habits have
changed completely. Business cards have been forgotten (although people
continue to insist on using them). Today everyone carries a mobile in their
hand, and when they need information, they can find it quickly. Not only that,
as soon as you find it, you can just as quickly save it to that same device and
integrate it with other apps like calendars, messaging, mail, and more.
Take a look at your
sector, surely most of the patients under 50 years of age request their
consultations by telephone or electronically (and if they do not do so, it is
because you do not facilitate the process for them); Through the same telematic
means, they can access their reports, analyses, X-rays; they can arrange their
appointments and integrate them into their calendars.
Do I need a website if
I'm a doctor?
Yes, I know what you
are going to tell me, that you don't need a website because you have your file
on sites like Doctoralia or Top Doctors, and that is enough for you.
Really? Do you want to
always depend on external companies for the digital part of your business
without having absolute control of them in your webspace? Do you want the
digital image that your patients perceive of your consultation to be offered by
those websites?
I do not mean to say
that these services are not very useful for those who cannot afford their web
space or complement those who do, but it will always be better to have absolute
control over the core of your business than have others.
Let's say it's like
having your consultation in which you decide on its design, choose the
material, set the hours prices, or have a consultation in a health center, where,
yes, it is cheaper, and they give you a good service, but not under your
control and direction.
Think now that websites
for doctors are like having your practice, but, of course, much cheaper
Once all this is
clarified, let's get to the topic.
Which Medical
Website Design is used for doctors and healthcare professionals, and how it
looks like?
Firstly, you must be
clear about one thing: that web pages for doctors are professional pages. Their
main objective is to serve as a virtual business card and a means of
disseminating your work, training, professional qualification, and skills.
And a professional
website should be like a house you live in: beautiful, of course, but above
all, livable and comfortable, both for you and all the guests who enter it.
Therefore, it should not be a place where only design prevails (although this
is fundamental) since its true purpose is that it serves a purpose and that you
are comfortable with it. In addition, it would be very good if, like a house,
they could easily carry out redecorations, reforms and, hopefully, extensions.
Not only that, web
pages for doctors must have particularly comfortable or simple navigation,
since they are often used by people who suffer from pain or some illness and
who, therefore, while browsing the web are not lying down peacefully having a
coffee No, They need information or make an appointment. They need to be able
to get this quickly and easily.
These all sound like
platitudes, right? You would be surprised to see how many of the websites for
doctors and health professionals that I have seen do not meet these
requirements, common to all professional websites for SMEs and freelancers, but
that in your sector have some peculiarities.
The 5-second test
What's this? Something
very simple and useful. If you already have a website, ask someone who has
never seen your website to open it and scroll down for 5 seconds. When that
time has passed, ask them to list what they have seen and read.
On the Internet,
attention is very fleeting, and in those 5 seconds, it must have been very
clear to them what the web is about, what types of services you offer, and if
you can be useful to them. Rest assured, if someone who doesn't know you comes
to your website and in 5 seconds they don't have this information, they will
simply leave to find someone else to give it to them.
From the first moment,
it has to be clear what type of doctor, dentist, physiotherapist, etc., you are
(this applies to all health professionals), what services you offer and what
kind of patients you treat.
The content of medical
websites
Let's imagine that
your website has passed the first test and you have managed to get your
patients to leave the hall of your house. Now you have to get them to stay, and
for this, you have to make it clear how you can help them what benefits they
can obtain if they stay.
Show who you are, what
you do, and how you do it. It shows why they should choose you over your
competitors (experience,
quality of service, technological innovations, availability), includes
testimonials from satisfied customers, answers their questions.
Think that when
someone arrives at your website, they usually do so from Google, and there they
have found you looking for information about someone who does something well,
show them from your website that it is indeed you. As I said before, people's
attention on the Internet is very fleeting, and if they find you and you offer
them what they are looking for, they will most likely not look any further.
Compatibility with all
types of devices
A current website must
adapt to all devices (that is, responsive ). Your website must provide a pleasant browsing
experience on all devices, adapting to different types of screens.
Currently, more than
70% of access to web pages occurs from mobile devices, and this is especially
important in the health sector, where you go to look for information when you
feel sick, wherever you are. You may not have a computer on that site, but
surely you will have a mobile.
The web content must
adapt and reposition itself according to the size of the screen so that the
user experience is always ideal.
Speed and Security
Before we talked about
the 5-second test, those seconds must be counted from when they type your
address in the browser or give the link in Google, not when they enter your
website.
What happens? If your
hosting is slow or your website has elements that slow down the load, it may be
that in those 5 seconds, you hardly have had time to see anything other than a
white screen. A website should load in a maximum of 3 seconds. If it exceeds
that time, possibly whoever reaches it will get fed up and leave without seeing
the content.
Your website must be
secured using the HTTPS protocol and show the closed padlock at the top of the
browser bar, indicating that it is secure. This is especially important if you
want reservations, purchases, or the like to be made on your website.
Design
Design is essential on
a website. I have already told you that the essential thing is that people will
come to your website to KNOW, but this does not mean they do not want to SEE.
The information
displayed in an orderly, clean and beautiful container will always attract much
more attention than a website with unpleasant color schemes, unbalanced or
disproportionate page designs, pages that do not look finished.
Remember that web
design is akin to platform shoes and flared pants; yes, it goes out of style.
You may have a website created 3-4 years ago, which was then the most of the
most, and that today is outdated, not only technically but also visually.
What colors should web
pages for doctors and health professionals have?
Although they will
vary a lot according to the sector, depending on the corporate image of each
professional, the backgrounds are usually white, something perfect to give cleanliness
to the design and to transmit that same purity and clarity to the users, and
they usually contrast with different shades of blue or green, both because they
are the most repeated colors in the sector. So, again, because of the
cleanliness, confidence, and freshness they convey.
Now, this is not
essential, and we can show you many websites that, starting from the white
background, play with other contrasting colors and are perfect (at the end of
the post, we will tell you about one that we have made and that is a clear
example of this).
Images and videos
The design can be very
good, but it requires images that complement and highlight it. If blurry or
poorly lit photos are inserted, developing a beautiful and functionally
wonderful website is useless.
The resource images
can be taken from photo banks, where you will find thousands adapted to your
specialty. If you go for this option, choose paid photo banks, where you can
get hundreds of images adapted to your situation for a fairly affordable amount
compared to the cost of the web.
Use photos that
potential patients can relate to, photos that represent your target
demographic, with people looking satisfied.
Now, along with these,
it is always advisable to customize the image section as much as possible. To
do this, a photo session in which the professional and his team and the Center
appear is almost essential and will mark a plus of quality compared to websites
that only have bank photos.
Video is currently
gaining prominence in storytelling, so if you can insert a presentation video,
it will add value to your website.
And what about the
photos of treatments?
Here it will depend on
the specialty because, in some cases, it is more important than in others. In
specialties related to people's aesthetic appearance, a complete photographic
gallery is essential, paying special attention to the BEFORE AND AFTER of each
case to see the evolution.
That yes, think
that your website is oriented to the user, not to other professionals (this
does not mean that you do not have a section for them, but separate from the
sections for patients). A user is not interested in photos of an operation. Even
more, they can be repulsive to them. Therefore, overly graphic photos
are something you should never include for your clients, and if you do, always
show a warning beforehand.
Blog
On a medical website,
the blog is very important. Why? Because as I said in a previous section, your
website must convey the reasons for choosing you. It must convey your
knowledge. You know your sector, that you are up to date in terms of medical
treatments and advances, that you propose useful treatments, that you deal with
success stories.
Not only that, before
I told you that your website should be aimed at the end-user, but if you want
to create a space for technical articles, this could be the blog, where you
will create a section of practical and academic articles aimed at
professionals.
But it is that in
addition, a blog can help you a lot to position your website in search engines,
to improve its SEO, that which is sought by all those who have a website. In
other words, to appear before other similar websites in Google for a specific
search.
The sections
We will not stop in
this post to comment on the specific sections that your website should have
because the website of an internist will be the same as that of a maxillofacial
surgeon or that of a physiotherapist.
But even being
different, all of them have in common most of the sections that most
professional websites have.
- Home or home page
- We (talking about the professional, his team, and his
Center, although this can be divided into several different pages)
- Treatments or services
- Photo gallery
- Blog / News
- Contact
Other features
We have just seen a
typical structure, but as I say, health websites often have other types of
specific functionalities. I will give you several examples
- Appointments: an
appointment system, which can be carried out through a contact form or an
external application such as Calendly
- Online consultations: either
by receiving the information on the web and using an external service such
as Zoom or by inserting a proprietary communication system with the
patient on the web.
- Online-store: to
sell products or services directly from the web.
- Private areas: if,
for example, you want to include a training component for professionals on
the web, you could teach the online courses directly from a private area
of the web. A private area could also be created to share additional
information with certain patients offer them exclusive services.
And the languages?
So, what about
languages? Should you have your page in English French? It depends on what you
want to achieve with it, where you are located and what market you want to
reach. Remember that your website is a showcase, you decide what to put on it,
and the logical thing is that you put the best of you.
If you live in a city
on the coast or the border, with a good number of foreign patients, or if you
provide some type of exclusive service that attracts citizens from other
countries, I see it as more than necessary, but always keep in mind that the
translation of the website has to go together with how you provide your
services. If you do not speak English or plan to work in that market, and your
followers do not speak it, do not put your website in English. You will not
generate confusion that may harm you.
And if you decide to
duplicate your page in another language, adapt the content and do not saturate
the website of another language with useless content. Instead, focus only on
what your patients from another language may be interested in (for example, if
you have English, Russian, Italian clients. and you only provide them with some
of your services, translate only those).
How are the web pages
for doctors that we develop?
In this post, I have
tried to convey two messages. First of all, how should your websites be, and
secondly, how do we make the websites, because there is nothing better than
leading by example? You can contact Healthcare Marketing Agency for
developing a high-rated website.
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