Treatment pages on your dental website

The good, the bad and the plain ugly….

A key component of a great dental website is the treatments section. Here you can showcase your services, promote any headline treatments and really show how you can make a difference for a prospective new patient. Consequently it’s important to put as much effort into this section of your website as any other.

Often we see websites where there is a “flashy” home page, a decent team page but then as you progress, it all get a little bit bland.

So what are the key considerations when planning the treatment pages for your new site?

Text content

First and most important, any text you use for a website page must be unique i.e. not the same as on any other website. Duplicate content is a big ‘no’ as it will not rank in Google and can even result in your website being penalised. This is a major issue to watch out for – some well known dental design companies offer “free” treatment text for their clients but then roll out the same content on all of their websites. To understand why this is a real problem, please take a look at our article here or just Google “duplicate content penalty”.

That established, you then need to think about who you are targeting. Is your website aimed at the general public, referring dentists or perhaps a combination of both? Are you targeting implants, primarily for the older generation or maybe fast orthodontics or teeth whitening to a younger audience? Is a conversational style better or would a more clinical narrative be more appropriate? This assessment of demographic target and writing style is essential if your page is going to be attractive and prompt enquiries. The bottom line here is that it’s well worthwhile taking the time to make sure your treatment text is first class.

Sub-headings and bullet points

No web user likes to be faced with a scree of text with nothing else to break up the monotony. Text should incorporate appropriate sub-headings to create a natural pause and, where appropriate, bullet lists to accentuate key points, for examples the pros and cons associated with a particular treatment. This is particularly important where there is quite a lot of text on the page. These sub-headings are also a key part of SEO as they can be used to ‘tell’ Google which items are most important.

The use of images

Images are particularly important to help grab a users attention and, of course, to show them some great treatments you’ve completed – perhaps with some ‘before and after’ shots to complement the descriptive text. Such images can be skillfully included in the page to make it attractive as well as informative.

Dental treatment animations

Animations have been around for a long time and they are very useful as an educational tool and to make a web page more attractive and attention grabbing. However, this is another area where you need to make a very careful selection to ensure that they are up-to-date and will actually work on wide range of viewing devices.

For example, some dental marketing companies offer animations as part of their web packages which are based on the outmoded ‘Flash’ technology. This will not display on Apple devices i.e. for the huge number of web users with IPhones and IPads. These days it’s a non-starter. These types of animations are also useless for those considering the latest responsive web designs. More here.

You also need to check whether the animations you thought you’d purchased are actually yours or just on lease to you as part of an expensive monthly contract.

There are now high quality dental animations available which are not Flash based and can be minimised for use with mobile devices and responsive designs. Please call use for examples.

Summary

The treatment pages of a dental website are extremely important and demand care and attention with their design. Text should be unique, targeted for the appropriate user base and correctly optimised for the best showing in Google.

Images and animations are great additions to make the page interesting and to help grab attention but be careful to ensure that your designer is not employing outdated technology.

If you would like to understand more about how the copy writers at Dental Media can generate unique and compelling text for your website or how our designers can make your pages stand out from the run-of-the-mill, please call us on 01332 672548.