What makes a great dental website home page?

It’s not just about looking good….

Over the last 18 months, web design has progressed more quickly than at any other time. Complex animations, drop-down menus and other stylish features are now available and in the hands of an experienced designer, actually quite easy to implement. This advancement is very apparent in the world of dental design where dentists who are fully aware of the marketing power of the internet, are requesting stylish designs in an attempt to differentiate in an increasingly competitive market.

So what makes a great dental website home page?

Aesthetics

Clearly a website needs to be immediately attractive to its users and encourage further interaction, with the ultimate aim of guiding the visitor to complete the contact form or pick up the phone – we call this the “conversion” process. There are lots of formulaic dental websites out there so look for a “hook” that personalises your site whilst still making it clear that its ‘dental’. Stock photographs are great and have a place but bespoke images can often work even better.

Branding

Make sure there is consistent branding across the whole business including signage, literature and web properties – this includes a logo, colour scheme and can even extend as far as the type of font used for particular applications. A clear and compelling strap line is also useful to make it absolutely clear what your business does.

Trust signals

Your visitors are typically a wary and sceptical bunch so include content that instills confidence e.g. logos from accredited bodies, an overview of positive reviews of the business etc. Subtle use of words like ‘you’ rather than ‘we’ or ‘I’ are also far more encouraging, so look at this carefully when you are planning navigation structures and prominent headlines.

Call-to-action (CTA)

These are the clear messages on your dental website that encourage users to take up a special offer, complete your contact form, sign-up to your newsletter etc. They need to be carefully structured and hierarchical – this means that you make your priority CTAs most prominent with your secondary and tertiary CTAs very evident but not distracting. Consider aspects like colour, positioning and the correct use of white space to ensure your CTAs are prominent and work well.

Target audience and demographics

We often see dental practice websites that have been rolled out to a formula but with little consideration for the target audience. Take for example an implant guy who’s website has lots of go-faster stripes and lots of smiley young models – is this going to work as well as a site that is more subtle, uses pictures of an older demographic and even considers usability features like text enlargement to assist the older user?

Provide tools to aid ‘micro-conversions’

What’s a micro-conversion? Consider that your visitors are quite stubborn and often need to visit a website several times or engage with you in other ways before finally committing to use your services. Micro-conversion tools are the enablers that assist this process e.g. sign-ups for your newsletter, bookmarking tools and social media follows. Make sure these features are available and easy to find.

Summary

The design of dental websites has moved on at pace in the last two years and is no longer about the “formula” sites that are all too evident. Important new aspects like those mentioned above must now be considered very carefully in the planning and draft design stages to ensure that the finished site not only looks good but also functions well.

If you have any questions about a new website or dental marketing project or just need a no-obligation opinion on your existing site, then please give the Dental Media team a call on 01332 672548.