Doctor Website Design

The 5 key perspectives for exceptional website design for doctors

(1) Strategy (2) Patient & Practice Needs (3) Website Best Practice (4) Being found on Google (5) Conversion

Article researched from over fifty Medical Practice Managers and owners in Australia.

Doctor Website Design

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

What does your medical practice’s website look like:

75%

75% of people judge a medical practice’s credibility based on their website.
Linkedin Statistic – 2023.

Poor medical website design can lead to:

  • Increased bounce rates – Patients leaving your website

  • Poor experience on mobile devices

  • Damage to your practice’s brand/reputation

  • Difficulty in finding your practice on Google searches

  • Slow website loading times

  • Weak adhered to medical website best practice standards

  • Poor conversion rates of website visitors to patients.

website design for doctors melbourne

A poor website experience may ultimately lead to a potential patient looking elsewhere for their medical advice and services.
Poor medical practice websites ultimately loose potential patients and income.

 David Douglas – Director at Medical Website Solutions

Exceptional medical website design is driven from these five perspectives:

1. Reflect your practice’s strategy & day-to-day needs
2. Meeting your patient needs
3. Meets international medical website best practice

4. Your medical services are found readily on Google
5. Conversion – Leads the patient to contact you.

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 – Top 15 Essential Elements of Successful Website Design – Mailchimp 2024.

1. Your website should support your practice’s strategy and day-to-day needs

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.

Websites for doctors - Strategy importance

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.

You can achieve this by including on your website:

  • Years your practice has been in business

  • Academic qualifications

  • Membership affiliations

  • Years of medical experience

  • Present or past positions held

  • Speciality areas of expertise

  • Approach to surgery and patient care.

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.

Websites for doctors - Can help patient care

Doctor Website Design

To optimise your information – Map out your ideal patient including:

  • Where do they live?

  • What income and education level do they have?

  • What detailed information are they looking for?

  • What level of service would they deem exceptional?

  • Why should they trust you and why do you appeal to them?

  • What problems are your patients looking to overcome?

  • What is their ideal outcome from your medical services?

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:

  • About 900 words with easy to read headings and sub headings

  • Images of children and older adults being helped by your friendly staff

  • How many years your practice has been helping the community

  • Useful flu vaccination information

  • Sign up to your newsletter to receive further information and notifications

  • Contact details for bookings and questions.

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.

Web Design for Doctors
See our website pricing, gallery and results!

Websites that (1) Look exceptional, (2) Perform brilliantly, (3) Deliver results.

3. Medical Practice Website – 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:

  • Make your information easy to read and digest

  • Organise information using headlines and sub headlines

  • Use bullet points instead of long sentences.

b) Typeface and font size

Use a typeface that is easy to read online and at least 16px in size.

Web design for doctors - Big font size needed

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.

AHPRA Logo

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.

77% of people use search engines to research their symptoms and start their patient journey.

Source: Healthcare Marketing Statistics – 2023.

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.

Website conversion importance

A 1% – 3% increase in patients per month is a 12% – 36% increase in patients per year!

Most patients follow this 5 step process:

Step 1: Medical problem recognition – Preliminary research

Step 2: Information gathering – GP, specialist or other sources for diagnosis

Step 3: Evaluation of alternatives – What will work best for the patient

Step 4: Commence treatment – Non-surgical vs surgical options

Step 5: Treatment, ongoing care and recovery.

Convert button

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 patient capture process may include:

  • Email sign up – Special reports

  • Tools – Ovulating calendars

  • Reminders – Flu shots, script renewals

  • Latest research or statistics

  • Case studies

  • Videos

  • Info-graphs

  • Online chat or click to call.

“The more helpful your website is in solving a 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?”

 David Douglas – Director at Medical Website Solutions

5. Is your medical practice easily found on Google searches

Here are the statistics on searches in Australia:

Key Statistic – 94.56% of internet searches in Australia are performed on Google.

Source: Australian Internet Usage Statistics 2023

Below is the potential traffic a website receives in relation to the top 5 positions on a Google natural search

Source: Banklinko – 2023.

Google search results Average traffic share
Number 1 position 27.6%
Number 2 position 15.8%
Number 3 position 11%
Number 4 position 8.4%
Number 5 position 6.3%

Being found on Google searches

The art and importance of Search Engine Optimisation

The above table indicates:

  • The number 1 position on a Google search will potentially attract 27.6% of website traffic.
  • The number 2 position on a Google search means a website will potentially attract only 15.8% of website traffic.

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

  • Your practice’s strategy

  • Patient needs

  • Medical website best practice

  • Conversion

  • Google search engine optimisation

Website Design for Doctors – If you have any questions

David Douglas

 ———-“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

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Website Design for Doctors

Australia – Gold Coast | Tweed Heads | 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 Gold Coast, Tweed Heads, 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.