Sally McKenzie

Your website is the Yellow Pages of the 21^st Century, and it's where patients look first to purchase products and services, including dental services. It works for your practice 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The website is the entrance to the practice. If the site looks dumpy and outdated, visitors will think the same of your practice. Prospective patients take one look and pass judgment literally in less than the blink of an eye. If it is visually appealing to them, they are likely to take some time to explore and learn more about what your practice has to offer. If it isn't, those prospective patients are on to another site almost immediately.

Many prospective patients will visit your website prior to calling your office, so your site must not only look professional but also provide a positive "user experience." While it can be tempting to have music, or dialog, or videos, that automatically load, too many bells and whistles tend to annoy visitors. Users prefer to have a choice in whether they want to activate those special features.

Additionally, professional design is essential to ensure that the site is fully optimized and drives traffic to your site and enables search engines to find it quickly and easily. The look of your website should be consistent with all of your other materials in that the overall appearance is similar in terms of the logo, the fonts, the colors, that represent your established practice brand.

Content should be written in a patient-friendly style, not too technical. Give enough information that prospective patients can scan the site to gather necessary details without having to read several text-heavy paragraphs. Keep the information clear and straightforward. For example, if you have a page on endodontics, it should explain the procedure in easy to understand terms - steer clear of dental jargon. It should cover why a patient would need a root canal, and what is involved. Experts recommend using about one to one-and-a-half pages of content per topic.  And always give visitors to your website the option of reading more by clicking on specific terms or tabs to see another page of information.

The site should be easy to navigate. Keep it consistent on every page.  If you make prospective patients and other visitors work too hard, they will leave your site and go to your competitor's.

Don't forget the obvious. Contact information including a phone number and physical location is a must. Make the phone number obvious and on every page and you make it easy for the visitor to pick up the phone and call now.

Don't forget the obvious: Contact information, including a phone number and physical location, is a must. Make the phone number obvious and on every page. And make it easy for the visitor to pick up the phone and call. 

Chat with one of our dental software experts at 888-910-4376 to learn more. Ask about our Google Nexus 7 tablet giveaway for doctors who make the switch by April 25, 2014.