What does “high quality” mean when it comes to dental website design?

When your design agency promises you a high quality website, will you really get one?

Virtually all dental web design companies will offer you a high quality website these days, but will you really get one at the end of the process? In today’s blog we take a look at what ‘quality’ actually means when it comes to website design for dentists and what you need to understand before you sign off on a new site development contract.

When it comes to website quality, we can break it down into 3 key areas – aesthetics, content and technical competence. All of those areas need to be addressed and done well before you can consider that a website is of high quality and capable of doing what you need i.e. bringing new patients to your dental practice.

Let’s take a look at each element in turn.

Aesthetics

Lots of design agencies can build pretty websites these days but unfortunately website success doesn’t stop there. Indeed it’s perhaps the main area where dentists fall down when choosing a design agency – they just decide on aesthetics alone without looking at the other key factors which decide how well a website will perform.

Of course an aesthetically pleasing website is very important as first impressions definitely count on the web as well as in real life. So you do need to make sure that your website looks at least as good as your best local competitor and if possible, better. Remember that folk are often quite fickle and they will see your website as a reflection of your own skills and services. Leaving a website to become old and stale certainly won’t help you, so be sure your site is aesthetically pleasing from launch and then kept fresh going forwards.

Dentistry is very competitive and this extends to website design for dentists too. In the last few years, design aesthetics have really moved on so you will need to keep on top of this if you want to keep up with your local competitors. Try to work with a proactive design agency and make regular reviews of your website and the websites of your main local competitors.

Regular updating to build in new features and fresh content will certainly pay off, however it’s also essential not to go over the top. All too often these days we see websites where every ‘bell and whistle’ has been added leading to a website which is confusing and ends up looking like a bazaar – please don’t be tempted to do that!

Content

Great content is also extremely important in the quest for a high-performing website. We need to consider two key things here 1) the needs of the user 2) the needs of Google.

The right balance of content is needed to ensure users have a great experience when using your website and crucially, that your content answer the questions they have and addresses their concerns. When building your website, it’s sensible to put yourself in the shoes of an average user and think about what they’d be looking for. So you need to be clear and concise and also provide the type of information which encourages them to use your services and not those of a competitor. You will need factual information about treatments, but also prominent illustrations of how you can solve the problems they are experiencing with their teeth, gums and smile.

Also please remember the importance of personalising your website and how much better those sites which use bespoke photography work, than those sites which rely solely on cheesy stock images.

We’ve covered this in a lot more detail elsewhere in the Dental Media blog but if you’d like to discuss in detail with one of our website content team, please get in touch and we’ll be pleased to advise.

Your website content and Google ranking

We also mentioned the need for great content when it comes to Google, so why is this? To understand this, you need to know that Google’s primary stated goal is to provide the best answers to user questions when they search. To do this, they evaluate website content and those which answer questions best, are usually ranked higher in search. There is more to it than this of course, but suffice to say that the quality of your website content plays a huge part here.

So your content has to resonate with Google as well as with users! Often we see website owners follow the wrong advice and try to go too concise and minimalist with their text content, only to fall down the rankings as a result. It’s important to get the balance right – not too much to overwhelm users, but sufficient for Google to class you as an authoritative source. Building your content progressively by adding new sections and regular blogging is also very helpful for this.

Technical competence

This is another huge area which is often neglected by website companies and completely missed by dental website owners. It affects both user experience on a website and also Google ranking.

From the user’s perspective, usability of a website is critically important. It has to work intuitively and speedily, so fundamentals such as clear navigation and how fast pages load are key. In simple terms, a user needs to be able to find the information they are looking for quickly and efficiently and not be distracted by irrelevant website features which have potentially been added by a designer to satisfy the latest fad. So please test as early as possible in the website development to ensure ease of use, good page speed and clarity.

The technical performance of a website is also increasingly important for Google rankings. As well as evaluating the quality of your content, Google now looks at a range of technical performance parameters in way more depth than it used to. It’s no longer based on simple things such as overall page speed but also factors such as how quickly key information loads on your page – so how quickly a user sees the main information even before the whole page loads. It really is that detailed now.

With regards to technical competence then, you need to satisfy yourself that what your designer tells you is actually best practice. Is that huge hero video on your home page which slows it all down really such a good idea and is that wacky parallax effect really adding value? Good designers will be totally transparent with you about these things and also illustrate and explain the tests they’ve done to assess how your new website complies versus latest standards.

Summary

Hopefully we’ve illustrated the main elements which really do determine whether a dental practice website is high-quality or not. Unfortunately many that purport to be so actually aren’t and far too many dentists aren’t even aware. They were simply sucked into the marketing spiel from a design agency without really knowing any different. Subsequently they then suffer when potential new patients struggle to use their website or worse, can’t even find it in Google in the first place.

Choosing a new website for your practice is not a trivial exercise and needs to be done carefully and with due consideration, not just following a fad or using a designer recommended by your friend or dental coach – there’s a lot more to it than that.

If you would like no-obligation advice about a new website or perhaps an evaluation of one which is currently under-performing, please contact the team at Dental Media on 01332 672548 or if you prefer, using our contact form.