Does Your Website Convey The Right Message?

Optimised messaging = increased engagement and new enquiries

It’s a well known fact that you have only a couple of seconds to grab your user’s attention when they land on the home page of your website.

If it’s bland, old-fashioned and unnappealing, then it’s no surprise that these visitors will simply choose to look elsewhere for their dental services – web users are fickle so it’s essential to convey the right message quickly.

Perhaps what is less well understood is that new websites can also be fairly poor at grabbing the attention of visitors too; even websites which look “nice” and adhere to the latest functionality guidlelines such as optimisation for mobile devices. Where these websites fall down, is that they haven’t been optimised for the messages that the business needs to convey to potential new patients.

We often receive requests from dentists asking for help after their new website has failed to deliver. This is typically where their chosen designer has used a standard WordPress template or similar and added a few stock dental images along with some generic, bland text to produce another “samey” looking design . It’s usually the case that the sites are either too confusing or simply that no-one has considered how to optimise the site to a) grab the user’s attention quickly and b) encourage them to get in touch. The bottom line is that websites need to work and looking “pretty” is only a part of this.

Conveying the right messages about your business – quickly and effectively

Getting the message across in the short space of time that you have available involves how your website is laid out, your use of text and also how you employ visual aspects such as images and video. Getting the combination right will increase your new dental patient enquiries significantly, indeed research shows that the effectiveness of websites which have been optimised this way can be increased by 30% or more. Failure to address the basic aspects means lots of users (and new enquiries) that you are throwing away.

To get your website messages right, you need to consider how your users are seeing it and the questions that are running through their own minds when they land on your pages. The following elements are key when considering the web page design and the messaging therein:

• is it immediately clear what your business is about?
• what makes you different from you competitors?
• did you set appropriate expectations for the user?

Let’s take a look at these elements in a little more detail and where many dental websites go wrong in their implementation.

Can a user tell immediately what you do?

This may seem obvious but all too often business owners have a perception that users will know all about them and what they do – they don’t! Just because you have a picture of a dentist’s chair or some of your team in dental uniforms on your home page, doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve conveyed an appropriate message. How often have you seen a dental website which has some arty but entirely nebulous image on the home page which might look pretty but simply doesn’t grab your attention?

I saw one such site recently which had a huge picture of a lovely park in central London together with a logo which didn’t really convey any message. The image changer on the home page then switched out to show a guy (I assume the practice owner), in an artistic pose but with no indication of what he actually did. I suspect this was an attempt to convey a message about a “high-end” dental service in an exclusive part of London, but it could easily have been a website for an actor or the local park service. Only when I looked closer at the site navigation and the introductory text, did I realise that it was a dental practice.

The important thing to remember here is what your users expect, and also the very short time you have to grab their attention – whilst this particular website possibly matched the owner’s perception of what was required, I’m fairly confident that it wouldn’t hit the mark for most regular web users.

Your logo, strap line and home page calls-to-action all need to be extremely clear and able to convey instantly who you are and what you do. Don’t let arty images and confusing web page elements get in the way of this.

What makes you different?

We all work in a competitive world and the business of dentistry is no exception; indeed the increase in competition dentists face seems to accelerate all of the time. Thus it is no good to have a website which simply looks nice, even if it conveys the message that you are a dentist quite well. Unfortunately there are lots of other dentists out there too, so you need to convey a message which differentiates you effectively from everyone else. You need to show how your skills and services can solve your user’s problems better than the other practices around you. Think about your target audience carefully, their interests, problems and aspirations – then how your unique selling points can deliver for them. And it’s not just that you “deliver dentistry in a comfortable and welcoming environment”!

You must highlight the strengths of your business prominently on your website’s home page, together with evidence to show how you’ve done it before. Think about video testimonials, showcasing who you’ve helped and how you achieved it. These are the elements which really work to grab a potential new patient’s attention and then encourage them to contact you. At Dental Media we will work with you to develop exactly the right messages for you website and key treatment pages.

Manage the level of expectation

This is an issue we encounter quite regularly when building websites for dentists. Purchasers of any service need to establish trust with their supplier and whilst you can say all sorts of things about your services and facilities, you need to be absolutely certain that the image and expectations you convey via the website can really be delivered. So for example, it’s no use having lots of information which implies that your are a leading “implant dentist” only for patients to find that you refer out for those services.

We also see examples where clients request a really “up market” website which belies the size of the single-handed practice and rented premises they operate. It’s one thing to make sure that your web presence is suitably attractive, but equally you must consider whether it represents your services and experience appropriately. A glitzy website might get you an enquiry in the first instance, but if the subsequent experience is second-rate, you can forget those all important word-of-mouth recommendations – in fact quite the opposite.

Summary

When developing your dental website, it’s extremely important to convey the value of your business quickly and effectively and how you are ideally placed to solve the problems of your potential new patients. But in doing this, you need to ensure that you don’t set expectations which can’t be delivered. Get the balance right, and your website will be primed to boost enquiries.

If you’d like to discuss website optimisation in more detail, please get in touch with the Dental Media design team on 01332 672548.