Having a website is important to the success of your practice, but it's only half the battle. Many medical practices use their websites to advertise and attract new patients but struggle to drive the right traffic. This poor performance is generally due to common design mistakes that don't just impact your number of site visitors but can affect your medical practice's reputation.

The good news is that there are solutions.  If you want to learn what's contributing to your website's poor performance and seamlessly drive more traffic to your website, read on to learn 4 common mistakes when designing your website and how to fix them.

4 Common Mistakes When Designing Your Practice's Website

Website design plays an important role in developing a successful practice. Quality web design doesn't just drive the right traffic, it influences the way visitors perceive your website and can help improve your practice's reputation. Here are 4 common website design mistakes to consider.

1. A Lack of Information

Providing sufficient information is important for your medical practice. When visitors come to your website, they will be looking for vital information to learn more about your practice and decide whether you're a good fit for them.

If visitors feel like it's too complicated to find important information about your practice, they will almost always abandon your website and find another practice with the accessible information they need.

What to Do

Be prepared to share more than enough information about your practice. You want to ensure that each one of your visitors is armed with the best details about your practice to help them make an informed decision. Include information such as:

• The name of your practice
• Contact information (including your physical address and phone number)
• Name of primary physicians and a short bio to help visitors get to know the team
• Other vital information such as practice specialties, provided services, and conditions your practice treat
  

2. Not SEO-friendly

Sometimes the issue isn't with providing enough information, but not making your website SEO-friendly. SEO is a driving force behind a successful website and is crucial when it comes to attracting your target visitors. In fact, 68% of online experiences begin with the search engine.

This means that if you want it to be easier for patients to find you, you will need a solid SEO strategy to give your website a boost. Medical practices with excellent on-page SEO efforts earn a better spot in the search rank, improve authority, gain a competitive edge, and provide an overall better user experience for visitors.

What to Do

There are various opportunities to improve your website's on-page SEO. One area to focus on is your title tags. The title tag is found on the browser title and search engine results page. With that said, it's important to avoid missing, duplicated, or poorly written title tags that will negatively impact your SEO score. Instead, write unique title tags for each page, include your target keywords, and be descriptive.

Another important area to focus on is your meta description. The meta description is the snippet of information that is displayed below the title and URL of your website as it appears in the search engine. For this reason, it's important that your description accurately highlights what your website is about, incorporates active voice, and includes a call to action.

In addition to this, it's important to perform a content audit for your existing content. Take a look at whether your existing content is achieving your goals, ensure information is accurate and up-to-date, and see what content needs to be added for improved effectiveness moving forward.

3. Not Optimized for Mobile

Optimizing your website for mobile devices is more important now than ever before. Not only are more visitors relying on mobile devices to browse websites, 73% of mobile search devices trigger additional action and conversion from visitors.

This means that medical practices are more likely to get an inquiry from a visitor when their website is optimized for mobile use. Unfortunately, many practices neglect this aspect of optimization, but a website highly responsive for mobile devices can really help increase your number of patients over time.

What to Do

Just like optimizing your website for on-page SEO, there are various ways you can optimize your website for mobile use. One of the first things you should focus on is decreasing the time it takes for your website to load. Your website's page speed is a big determining factor when it comes to a mobile user remaining on your website.

Websites that load too slowly will cause visitors to quickly leave, but fast-loading websites will help practices not only attract visitors but keep them engaged. With that said, you can increase your site's loading speed by doing things like compressing your images, implementing caching, and keeping all aspects of your website up-to-date.

Another important mobile optimization tip is to re-design any pop-ups you have on your website. Pop-ups are one of the most effective ways to grab a visitor's attention, but if it's not optimized for mobile devices, these pop-ups will only serve as a distraction.

4. Unattractive Website Design

It goes without saying that an unattractive website design doesn't fare well with visitors. But many practices don't invest much time in the appearance of their websites. A website that isn't attractive isn't just disengaging, it doesn't look professional.  Professionalism is certainly key for every medical practice, which is why an unattractive website design can hurt the core of your practice and unfortunately set your practice on the wrong path.

What to Do

An unattractive website can easily be fixed using the right design elements. For instance, practices can use forms and buttons to make it easier for visitors to request a consultation or schedule a service.

Additionally, it's important to add enough information to help visitors make an informed decision without overloading your website, making navigation difficult. Not only that, but it's important to choose colors that align with your brand and add visual elements to break up content to make your website more engaging.

Your website serves as an online representation for your medical practice. A quality website effectively communicates what your practice specializes in and provides adequate information for visitors to make the best decision. It's important that your website is optimized for the SERPs as well as for mobile use to increase quality traffic and provide the right design aesthetic for an improved user experience.

If you'd like assistance with designing a great website for your medical practice, reach out to DearDoc today and take advantage of expert support:

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