by AdminPosted on Posted in email

Is your e-newsletter system working correctly for viewing on mobile?

optimising website designThe need for mobile-optimised or “responsive” websites is well-understood and now widely adopted by the majority of dental practices who are serious about their web presence. For those who are still lagging behind, the disadvantages of providing poor user experience and lower Google ranking are very real.

However, far less has been said about other web systems which also need to be re-configured to embrace the mobile revolution. In particular, e-newsletters which are used by many practices to broadcast regular e-news updates to their patients.

Dental e-newsletters

Elsewhere in this blog we’ve discussed the many benefits of establishing an email list of patient (and prospective patient) contacts and using this to send out news updates and offers on a reasonably regular basis. Done well, this is a great way to keep your business in the forefront of patients minds, particularly in an environment where they are already likely being bombarded with promotional material from your nearby competitors. There are a number of good systems available; some like the excellent MailChimp are free, which enable you to compile a newsletter via a web-based system and easily send it out to to your full email list or targeted segments of the list if preferred.

Why mobile-optimised?

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by AdminPosted on Posted in local search

The effect of the Internet on your choice of location – local SEO

local Google results for a dentistThis may sound rather an odd topic but what I hope to illustrate quickly in this article, is that you really must consider patient acquisition from the web when deciding where to build, or buy, a dental practice. The key factors to consider are Google local search and also the level of existing competition in the main search index. These two elements alone can have a huge bearing on how easy, or difficult, you will find it to acquire new patients who are searching on the web for dental services.

Many new practice owners neglect the effect of the web and fail to evaluate it properly, if at all. They tend to fall back on the traditional means of evaluation; the number of practices in the local area, physical prominence of the practice, exposure to local footfall, population demographic etc. Of course all of these factors need to be taken into account and matched to the ambitions and objectives of the owner, but it’s also absolutely critical to evaluate the effect of the web and how you will use it to attract new patients.

Why the web, particularly Google, matters

The big misconception held by a lot of dentists is that they believe they can still rank prominently on Google for locations where they aren’t actually based. So for example, trying to rank for “dentist York” when you are actually based in a small village 7 or 8 miles away. Whilst it may be reason to think that people will travel a relatively short distance to acquire high quality dentistry, particularly non-routine treatments, unfortunately Google isn’t going to help much in achieving that. This is because Google localises searches – so for the example just given, potential new patients looking for a dentist in York, are going to see results from all of the businesses in and around the centre, not really much from the peripheral villages. Whilst you may see the odd case where this doesn’t follow, those examples are in the vanishing minority.

This is not just for the local (map) results you see on page one – there is now evidence to suggest that the physical location of a business also affects how Google ranks it for all of the positions on page one (excluding paid ads).

An example

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Content Management

If your web designer is using their own content management system, be cautious

mistake signElsewhere in the Dental Media blog we’ve discussed the pros and cons of content management systems (CMS) and whether or not you need to implement one for your practice website. On the upside they can be useful for making minor changes to text but on the downside, for anything more detailed you will likely need the assistance of your web designer. There are also the security and maintenance issues to understand. But with these limitations understood, you should be able to make an informed choice about whether or not you want to use a CMS.

In today’s blog we take a closer look at CMS and a particular pitfall to be wary of if you do decide to implement one. The issue in question concerns bespoke CMS solutions, i.e. developed in-house by your web designer, and how their inherent lack of portability and support, can cause problems if you need to move elsewhere for your dental website maintenance and support.

Types of CMS

Widely available, open-source solutions:

There are a number of website CMS available, most of them free to use or “open source” as it’s known. This ranges from the popular (but security problem prone) WordPress system, to less popular but more robust systems often favoured by developers of business critical websites. Most versions can run your website and have active forums where you can get support and download the latest version or updates. The communities which have developed around the various types of popular CMS mean that you can usually get support elsewhere, should you ever have cause to move on from the designer who built your website. So these CMS solutions are usually fully portable.

In-house developed, bespoke solutions:

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Photography

What’s best for your dental practice website?

Dental Media photography for dentistsIt won’t come as much of a surprise that, when consumers are shopping for products and services, including dentistry, they are attracted to websites which use high-quality, engaging imagery more-so than sites which are text heavy with few, low quality photographs.

The old adage “a picture paints a thousand words” is very true for this example and so it really does make sense to spend a little time, and where necessary allocate a reasonable budget, to acquire high-performing images for your website.

However, I’d like to go a little further than this and explore the benefits of top quality, bespoke photographs over the “stock” images which are readily available from the plethora of stock image sites around the web. First, let’s take a look at stock photographs to form a basis for comparison.

Stock photography – is it any good?

The answer is “yes” – stock can be very useful when creating websites for dentists. Indeed, here at Dental Media have access to thousands of high-quality images which are useful for our clients’ websites. These images are typically sourced under licence from a few huge libraries of on-line images, and, once we (or you) hold the licence, they can be used for your projects, whether branding, print or web. It’s not quite as straightforward as that and there are different exclusions and restrictions for the various image types – so be sure to check carefully if you decide to source your own stock. Inappropriate use will land you in hot water as some of the image licencing laws are extremely punitive. Oh, and please don’t just steal them from the web!

It’s worth pointing out that some marketing companies claim “single use” for the stock images they propose to use when building your website, but you need to check very carefully what this actually means. Often it’s simply the case that they won’t use them with other clients, but of course they are still available for others to licence and use and consequently you’ll still see them in use all over the place. So watch out for this marketing trick and don’t be duped into thinking you’ll have exclusive rights – unless you purchase images outright which is very expensive, you won’t.

So it’s fair to say that stock can be very handy to build websites, but is it as good as a bespoke photo shoot and truly personalised images?

Bespoke website photography

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Website

A full design update versus periodic content updates – how often?

website design and updatesA good quality website should serve you well for several years, but you should still expect to make periodic updates to an existing design and then carry out a more extensive, structural update every 3 or 4 years. In this blog we take a look at why this is and why you simply can’t leave your website untouched in the hope that it will continue to perform optimally.

There are two main factors to consider:

  • periodic updates to optimise for users and search engines
  • undertaking a complete overhaul and re-design at the appropriate time

Updating your website – why and when?

So you’ve had a brand new website designed and published and so you should be able to forget about it and get on with your main dental activities, right? Actually this is not a good strategy, and whilst you shouldn’t need to change too much early on, leaving the practice website to stagnate will dilute its benefit as time passes.

With the Internet changing so quickly, you need to take appropriate steps to keep your website up-to-speed. Here are a few simple examples to illustrate:

  • mobile optimisation – over the last few years more and more people have moved to mobile devices to surf the web. And yet we still see many dentists who are delivering poor user experience and falling away in Google results by steadfastly sticking with old-fashioned, non-optimised websites. This is a huge mistake and will certainly result in losing out on new patient enquiries. So if there is a fundamental change such as this, you simply must update to keep in touch – you can be sure that your web-savvy local competitors have.
  • search engines – this is also linked to the mobile optimisation mentioned above, however there is more to it than simply optimising for hand-held devices. Where content begins to stagnate and becomes less appealing to users, your page “bounce” rates worsen which Google can measure. Websites which are appealing to users tend to fare better in search results than ones which have stagnated – so fairly regular updates make sense. In a nutshell, if users like your website and engage with it, chances are you will fare better in Google too.
  • other technical and and legislative requirements – it’s not just Google we need to be concerned about when it comes to technical updates for your website. Coding standards change as does the software on the servers which run your site. If you aren’t making periodic updates to keep in step, you can find that your site suddenly stops working without notice. There may also be changes in legislation to take account of e.g. updates from the GDC and ICO to name just two.
  • security – this isn’t really about the aesthetics of your website but more about the underlying coding and systems which make it work. You need to ensure that your website is maintained to keep it secure (particularly if you are using a content management system) and be sure that your hosting company are maintaining their servers to keep them secure and efficient.
  • the full website update – like it or not, periodically your website will need a complete overhaul to bring it to the latest design and coding standards. Even websites which are 3 – 4 years old begin to look tired as designers and marketers implement latest techniques to make new websites as appealing as possible. Web users are quite fickle and many are attracted by the best looking websites, irrespective of what the dental services behind it may be like. So you need to put your best foot forward and ensure you web presence is always in great order.

Is there such a thing as a “fire and forget” dental website?

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Advice

Avoiding onerous, tie-in contracts

optimising website designToday’s blog post takes a look at how you can come unstuck if your rent or licence your practice website rather than purchase it outright.

Perhaps too often, we’ve seen dentists trip up over the small print of web design and maintenance contracts; so here we take a look at another example of how this can happen and the problems which result.

Forewarned is forearmed, so please watch out for this scenario when you sign up for a new dental website.

A dentist recently called us for advice following a recommendation he’d received about our services, coupled with disenchantment with his existing supplier. He basically wished to transfer his website to our safekeeping following numerous problems he’d experienced with his supplier, together with escalating monthly costs. Other marketing services he’d been promised had not been delivered, even though he’d waited patiently for a number of months for projects to be completed; so he decided to cut his losses and move.

Having discussed what we understood to be the background with the dentist, we opened discussions on his behalf, with the intention of moving his website and email from the existing supplier across to our infrastructure. We’ve done this on numerous occasions previously and typically it’s straightforward, however this time, it proved not to be the case. Almost immediately the supplier wrote to the dentist re-iterating that he was actually just “licencing” his website and that he didn’t actually own it or the content. It was made clear in no uncertain terms that any attempt to transfer or use the website would class as copyright infringement. The poor dentist could not even access his domain name as this was controlled but the supplier.

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Advice

A cautionary tale of a self-hosted website gone wrong.

High quality dental website hostingHere at Dental Media we have a reputation for transparency and flexibility and we strive to work with clients to deliver the most cost-effective and professional solutions in line with their budget.

However, we will always recommend what we believe are the most professional and robust solutions for you, even if these are more expensive than cheaper versions which may be available. Once such example of this is with website hosting i.e. renting the space on a server where your website files are stored and served 24/7 to users via the internet.

We currently manage hundreds of websites for dentists and the vast majority use our hosting servers for this. However, a few prefer to go their own way and select their own hosting provider, simply giving us access to load the required website files and make any subsequent changes. This decision to use a third-party tends to be driven by a couple of things either a) they go for a cheap hosting provider or b) their local IT guy recommends someone and they feel obliged to stick with that. Unfortunately both of those can be ill-advised as we’ll illustrate.

Cheap website hosting – the pitfalls

Website hosting is available for as little as £30 per year and some see it as a commodity where you go for the cheapest you can find. However, this type of hosting really isn’t for business websites and is more directed at the hobbyist who doesn’t need first-class support and who doesn’t worry so much if the website goes off-line regularly. This type of hosting also tends to be overcrowded, meaning that you website pages will load slowly and, often, based in data centres overseas where the response time for support enquiries can be days, if at all.

For a dentist who is reliant on their website as possibly the main source of new patient enquiries, a ‘flaky’ service of this nature is far from desirable. To compare, professional UK-based, business grade hosting provided by Dental Media, is currently £99 + vat per year. More on the benefits of this in a moment.

Using hosting recommended by your local IT support service

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by AdminPosted on Posted in social

It depends….

Facebook logoThere is an apparent trend at the moment for dental practices to try out Facebook marketing, perhaps on recommendation from their marketing company, business coach or from what they’ve read in the media. Many practices are also trying it under their own steam in true ‘DIY’ style. But is Facebook marketing really the route to lots of valuable new patient enquiries or are there some pitfalls along the way?

So let’s take a look at how Facebook marketing can be used to complement other channels along with a comparison of what you might expect in the quality of new patient enquiries compared to traffic from organic (free) search and Google pay-per-click (AdWords).

How are Facebook ads deployed?

There are a couple of different ways to highlight your business and present it to potential new patients on Facebook. Long gone are the days when your business page posts would reach most of the people who “liked” your brand page; so these days you have to pay-to-play to boost those posts and broaden your post reach.

The other way is to advertise i.e. push your ads to targeted groups across Facebook. Whilst the targeting options are very granular i.e. you really can narrow down the categories of people you try to reach, the fundamental nature of the platform does mean that you are presenting advertising to users who aren’t specifically searching for those services at that particular point in time. Even where you are re-targeting i.e. presenting ads to those people who have previously visited your website, their intent to purchase services from you at that time is arguably a lot less than when they are specifically searching in Google for example.

When we look at the data for website visits and new patient acquisition from the Facebook channel, what we tend to find is that there is normally a very high bounce rate and generally a low level of conversions, i.e. you need a lot of visits to get relatively few new enquiries. This compares less favourably to visits from Google organic search (the traditional, free results) and to a lesser extent pay-per-click AdWords. This is primarily down to the fact that the user intent is much lower when the visitors clicks through to you from Facebook than when they are specifically searching for products and services via a search engine. Bounce rates from Facebook visits i.e. the user goes elsewhere immediately after landing on your website, can be as high as 90% or more. Of the 10% that do explore the rest of your site, remember that only a small proportion of them will actually contact you. So the erosion at each stage is high.

So is Facebook marketing all bad?

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Advice

Learn from these basic errors and get back on track with new patient acquisition.

Falling dental profitsWith all of the pressures of modern practice; increasing competition, burdensome legislation and more, it’s easy to lose sight of the importance of a well-thought out and carefully managed marketing campaign.

Even when there is a marketing campaign in place, it’s not unusual to find dentists who have become so distracted by other pressing matters that plans and procedures fall into disrepair and the whole framework begins to crumble and things run out of control.

With this in mind, and drawing on 17 years of experience working with dental practices, here are some of the most common marketing errors I’ve seen and continue to see, when called on to new projects. Please use this quick check list to make sure your own campaigns are on track and delivering and if you need any help, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Who is your ideal patient?

As with any business, it’s extremely important to know your target audience and how you propose to acquire and develop new patients to help grow your dental practice. The techniques needed to target “niche” audiences such as implant and ortho patients differ from those used to build a general list of patients for a new start-up for example. Until you know exactly the type of patient you are targeting, you will struggle to implement the correct tools to communicate with them. So start with the basics and don’t be too eager to kick off with a “scatter gun” approach.

Not measuring effectiveness

This is all too prevalent and it’s quite surprising just how many dentists pay out hundreds if not thousands of pounds per month without understanding which marketing channels are working and which aren’t. It’s critically important to have access to the data you need to ensure that you understand what is happening with your marketing budget. If you are using a marketing company to assist, ensure that you have access to all of the analytical tools that they use and that you receive a comprehensive monthly progress report. The bottom-line is how many new patients have contacted you, so make sure that this fundamental “conversion” data is available. It’s not just about your Google search positions and website traffic.

You also need a holistic view of patient numbers and the value that they are delivering. Understand your “churn” rates (are the newcomers easily making up for any leavers?) and are the new clients fulfilling your patient “life-time” value criteria? For example, gaining a bunch of tyre-kickers from a Facebook campaign for cheap whitening might not really be what you’d intended?

Expecting overnight success

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by AdminPosted on Posted in seo

The recent Google algorithm update which has potential to wreck website rankings.

linksTo the layperson who has limited or no exposure to search engine optimisation and how Google works, this may sound both a little bizarre and perhaps quite worrying too. What has a “penguin” got to do with a dentist’s website search ranking and how can it be so bad as to wreck my Google positions?

These are two very valid questions, and with the latest iteration of the Google Penguin update just released (the last was well over a year ago), we thought it worthwhile to quickly recap on perhaps one of the most significant elements of Google search algorithm and the way it works to determine how your website fares in the ranking results.

What is the Penguin update and how does it work?

Firstly it’s perhaps important to explain that the Penguin update is not new. It was first introduced back in April 2012 and the effects of that are covered elsewhere in this blog. In a nutshell, it was introduced as an anti-spam measure, particularly to seek out those websites which had been using manipulative techniques such as mass link-building and exact-match anchor text to boost their Google positions. As we’ve covered previously, many dentists’ websites were hit really hard and pushed way back in the ranking results – quite a big blow to business for many of them.

The update has been run a few times since 2012 and more refined in the way it acts; but each time more websites which have been using promotional techniques outside of Google’s guidelines, have been caught out and penalised.

Before we move on the discuss how your own website may be at risk, it’s also worth noting that the Penguin updates to-date, have not been part of the core Google algorithm; more an add-on filter which is periodically invoked specifically to weed out offenders. However, it was announced that with the new update, that Penguin will actually become part of the core and run in real time.

Is your own website at risk?

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