Why Your Dental Practice Website Is So Important

Why Your Dental Practice Website Is So Important

Top five reasons why your website is your priority marketing tool.

Of all the marketing tools and systems we provide for dentists, the one we always advise should be priority is the practice website. In spite of this, it’s unfortunate that quite a lot of dentists still neglect their websites, letting them become stale and outdated and consequently missing out on the numerous new patient enquiries that could have resulted.

With this in mind, let’s recap on the top ten reasons why a top-grade dental practice website is hugely important for the success of your practice.

It’s a public representation of your services

When someone is seeking new dental services, whether a long-term partnership to look after their oral health, or perhaps a one-off course of treatment for an implant, you can rest-assured that the majority of them will visit your website to find out more about you. This applies whether the patient was made aware of you through a recommendation, or whether they found you via an on-line search in Google or other platform.

It’s inescapable therefore, that your web presence needs to accurately and elegantly represent the services you provide and the standards you uphold. It doesn’t take too much imagination to understand what a potential new patient might think if they found an old and unloved website? Chances are they will just look elsewhere.

It’s a platform for building great Google ranking positions

The number of new patients enquires coming from Google searches is second only to those coming from word-of-mouth recommendations. Getting those all-important, prominent Google positions is a lot easier if a website is up-to-date and meets Google’s ever-changing standards. Where websites become stale and the technical infrastructure outdated, Google rankings can progressively fall away and with that, your new enquires decrease too.

With dentistry becoming ever more competitive and web savvy dentists doing all they can to dominate Google with excellent websites and SEO, you really can’t afford to be left behind.

It answers the key questions patients need answered

If you compare and contrast a modern, well-structured website with one build a few years ago, you will likely find some significant differences. Not only will there be some key technical changes “under the hood”, there will likely also be changes in the way that the content has been structured and written.

These days a dentist’s website should focus not just on information about treatments, but also about how those treatments and the dentist’s services have resolved patient’s problems; often changing their lives for the better too. If you aren’t telling these types of “stories” and making them super-engaging, then you will certainly not be attracting new enquiries as well as you could be.

We actually see the effects of this in our analytics data from older websites – even where the traffic levels to those sites are still quite good, the conversion rates (the ratio of enquires to traffic) are still typically a lot lower than newer websites with engaging, fresh content.

It provides better payback than any other marking tool or technique

Earlier this week I enjoyed an in-depth discussion with a dentist about the quality of leads (enquiries) coming from various channels; from his website, social media ads and Google ads. The main takeaway from this discussion and analysis of the data he’d accrued at the practice, was that the enquiries coming via his website were significantly better than those coming from social media and even Google ads. Whilst those other channels were still providing good returns, they required much more effort to convert into actual treatments.

What we tend to see is that as soon as a new website gains a foothold in Google and enquiries start to come in, the gains and resulting payback can be very rapid indeed, often just a few months. This is quite easy to demonstrate and it still makes me wonder why so many dentists don’t take the opportunity to make sure their website is top-notch and continuing to work hard for them.

By all means you should experiment with other marketing and advertising tools as there are some good results to be had, but for certain, don’t neglect your website and Google ranking.

It reduces your practice administration

The benefits here are not often discussed but a well-planned and structured website can really help reduce office tasks within the practice. This can range from integration with your appointment booking system, to having a comprehensive section on your website where patients can download information pdfs, policies, procedures and more. For dentists who accept referrals, these enquiries can also be automated via the website.

Whilst there will always be the need for the personal touch, if you can digitise some of these types of activities, you will certainly reap the benefits in your back-office processes.

Summary

The benefits of a well-designed, up-to-date and engaging dental website are very clear, from being a great way to attract new patient enquiries, right through to helping minimise some of the back-office tasks within the practice.

Some dentists realise just how powerful a great website is, whereas lots seem to be content to rest on what they have, despite the benefits of a new site being easy to quantify and very clear. It really does make good sense to look after your website diligently, updating it periodically and being prepared for a full upgrade when the time is right.

If you’re just starting your new website journey or looking the re-vamp an existing version and need some no-obligation guidance, please get in touch with the team at Dental Media on 01332 672548 or by using the contact form if preferred.