Website Design for Doctors
Australia – Melbourne | Sydney | Brisbane | Adelaide | Perth | Darwin | Canberra
Results driven – Website design for doctors & online marketing solutions.
Article researched from over fifty Medical Practice Managers and owners in Australia by:
David Douglas
Director – Medical Website Solutions | Head of Health Marketing.
Over 15 years of website and online marketing experience.
Your medical practice’s website should be delivering the following:
Save practice time
Reduce daily repetitive tasks
Reduce running costs
Streamline your practice
Increase appointments
Convert more patients
Improve patient care
Better communication
This is what usually happens when designing a website for a doctor:
Step 1 – The principal doctor or practice manager needs a new website or is looking to update their current site.
Step 2 – They look around for someone to build it for them.
Step 3 – A lot of to-ing and fro-ing later they get their website.
This sounds good but they have just potentially:
Web Design for Doctors
Exceptional medical website design is driven from these five perspectives:
- Supporting your practice’s strategy and day-to-day needs
- Meeting your patient needs
- Meets international medical website best practice standards
- Conversion – Leads the website user to contact you.
- Your medical services are found easily on Google.
Websites that are not designed taking into account the these five perspectives tend to perform poorly (e.g. high bounce rates, low time on site, low pages per visit and poor conversion rates).
Source – 25 Website design design tips from Forbes.
Websites for Doctors – Design principals
An exceptional website design for doctors encompasses pleasing aesthetics, ease of use, engaging content and above all converting website browsers into patients.
There are many factors that affect the usability of a website. It’s not just about form (how good it looks) it’s also about function (how easy is it to use).
Mapping out these steps is crucial to the success of your website.
Find out why medical practices choose Medical Website Solutions – Why choose us?
1. Your website should support your practice’s strategy
A medical practice strategy involves developing long-term actions that will differentiate a practice from its competitors and lay the foundation for success.
Your strategy should take into consideration the current position of the practice with respect to its capabilities and the environment in which it operates – Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
How should your website support your strategy
Your website should tell potential patients:
(1) Who you are (2) What you do (3) Why should they use your medical services.
Your strategy may include a plan on how you attract patients to your website and how you capture, diagnose, treat and care for them whilst they are under your care.
2. Your website must meet your patients needs
Effective website design for doctors is based on the ability to connect, build trust and ultimately convert a website browser into a patient. This depends on how relevant your website’s content is to the end-user and their needs and wants.
Many factors go into making a potential patient feel confident about your services. It could include your years of experience, specialist expertise, location, accreditation, convenience, guarantee or appointment follow up service.
Use this information to map out your website copy requirements – For example – If you’re a local GP and are looking to raise awareness of your flu immunisation program. The content on your web page should contain:
This sounds relatively straightforward. But, setting this page up to ensure you receive local patients is vital to having a successful practice. If you missed out having the names of your local suburbs in your website copy the chances of you attracting local patients is greatly decreased.
3. Your website needs to meet medical website best practice standards
a) Information layout
People want information from websites quickly. Website design for doctors is no different, so:
b) Typeface and font size
Use a typeface that is easy to read online and at least 16px in size.
c) Colours & images
A well developed colour palette enhances the user experience and can make reading your website copy easier. Vibrant colours create emotion and ideal for buttons and calls to action. White space is very effective at giving your website a modern and uncluttered look.
Choosing the right images for your website can help with brand positioning and connecting with your target audience. Consider professional photos or purchasing stock images to lift the look of your website.
d) Navigation
Navigation is about how easy it is for people to move around your website. It must be logical and take patients on a journey through your website to the information they are after. All information must be found within three clicks.
e) Meet Ahpra Advertising guidelines
Your website must adhere to the Medical Board of Australia’s Guidelines for Advertising of Regulated Health Services.
f) Medical website best practice
We regularly look at local, national and international medical websites as well as your direct competition to ensure we give you all the latest information and trends in medical website design and services.
4. Conversion – Getting your website visitors to contact you
Working out the process of how potential patients find and use your services is vital so you can set your website up to deliver new patients into your practice.
Most patients follow this 5 step process:
Step 1: Medical problem recognition – Visit doctor for diagnosis.
Step 2: Information gathering – GP, specialist or other sources
Step 3: Evaluation of alternatives – What will work best for them
Step 4: Commence treatment – Medical or surgical options.
Step 5: Treatment, ongoing care and recovery.
By mapping out this process for your patients and setting up your website accordingly not only builds trust in your medical services but allows you to provide key information at vital times during a potential patients key touch points. During these key touch points you have the opportunity to capture and follow up their enquiries.
The more helpful your practice can be in solving a potential patients problem the chances of them using your medical services dramatically increases.
A web professional familiar with your practice, target audience, patient needs can help you increase income and patient care.
“Is your website building team undergoing this process to ensure your website performs its best?”
5. Are your medical services easily found on Google searches
Here are the statistics on searches in Australia:
Below is the potential traffic a website receives in relation to the top 5 positions on a Google search
Source: ahrefs.com – 2020
| Google search results | Average traffic share |
|---|---|
| Number 1 position | 30% |
| Number 2 position | 15% |
| Number 3 position | 10% |
| Number 4 position | 6% |
| Number 5 position | 5% |
Being found on Google searches
The art and importance of Search Engine Optimisation
The above table indicates:
Search engine optimisation can be highly useful to medical practices in terms of attracting potential patients.
There are over 200 factors that contribute to ranking a website for a keyword or topic. How this could potentially work for your practice needs careful attention and expertise.
Exceptional results come from knowing
Website Design for Doctors – If you have any questions
———-“Our strategic approach to website design for doctors has delivered great results for the vast majority of medical practices we work with!
If you have any questions please feel free to call or email me personally.”
David Douglas – Medical Website Solutions
Medical Website Solutions can help your medical practice with:
WEBSITE BEST PRACTICE IMPROVEMENT ADVICE ON YOUR CURRENT WEBSITE
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Website Design for Doctors
Australia – Melbourne | Sydney | Brisbane | Adelaide | Perth | Darwin | Canberra
Medical Website Solutions develops custom website design and online marketing solutions for medical practices across a range of specialities including General Practitioners, Specialists, Surgeons, Dentists and Allied Health Professionals from all over Australia including Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Canberra and Darwin. We work closely with you to develop a website that meets your practice’s strategic and day to day needs.