Does your website represent your practice accurately?

Capturing your business personality on-line.

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of speaking with a potential new client about their new website project. I have many such conversations but this one was quite different and particularly interesting.

Typically a new website customer ‘phones and is in a slight rush; either between surgery appointments or perhaps at a lunch break. They obviously know that a website is important for their dental business but quite a lot of them haven’t really had chance to think much further than that. So we begin the consultation process and bring our knowledge to bear to make sure that the client’s new site is as good as we can make it. Over the years we have gained a lot of experience and we know what works and what doesn’t when it comes to designing a website for a dentist; so even where the client has only had limited time to consider, we can still produce an excellent site for them.

However, in the case I noted above, this particular gentlemen really “got it” when determining what his practice website needed i.e. a very clear vehicle for showcasing the personality and ethos he had helped build at his practice over the last ten years. When I say “his” practice, it was actually his wife’s business but he played an active role in recruiting, training, motivating and managing the staff therein. His main job, however, was that of a business consultant and lecturer at one of the UK’s leading universities. So it was really useful to discuss his thoughts and how he saw the new practice website being developed.

The business advocates

The gentleman explained very clearly how his wife’s practice had developed and how they had nurtured all of the staff to become ambassadors for the business. This had been so successful that word-of-mouth referrals to the practice were extremely bouyant and with new patients travelling 10 miles or more to join up.

His key focus was on what many of us know as the “patient” journey and how the first and last interactions between the practice team and the patient were of paramount importance. We probably all know that if this is done well, then your are on the right road to patient satisfaction. But it actually went a lot deeper than this, in fact right through to analysing the demographic of the patient base and ensuring that the practice recruitment policy was appropriate to nurture it. So for example, his best business advocates and brand ambassadors are his 40 and 50 something reception staff who love to engage with the patients about the latest TV shows and current gossip in the town.

I genuinely came away from the conversation feeling that the patients at this particular practice actually do enjoy going there! His “training” policy goes way past bolting-on some telephone answering techniques and cheesy “how may I help you” one-liners – this guy actually knew how to engender a superb business culture all the way through his team. No 9-5 ‘ers there I suspect.

Given the above, it’s probably clear to see why the guy is so keen to cascade this “culture” and image across to his new website. So how can this be achieved? The key is “personalisation”.

In depth discussion and fact-finding

Before we begin any project, a considerable amount of time is spent up-front to determine exactly what the clients needs. This will be achieved through a combination of discussions, design questionnaires and meetings. Once the baseline information is collated, only then can we being the draft design phase.

Design – the “car” analogy

The gentlemen used a particularly useful analogy when trying to explain the patient demographic of his practice and whilst it may sound a little odd at first, I completely understand what he is saying. His website needs to be like a particular model of a well-known German car; not a Ford or Ferrari but a vehicle which he believes represents the “type” of patient at the practice. This is an extremely useful way to understand the typical range of patients – reasonably affluent but not ostentatious. So this is the “look and feel” of the website which is required. Of course this information needs to be built upon, but with one short phrase, we know in which direction this potential client wishes to go. There will be no “cookie-cutter” WordPress templates for this website.

Images and video

Lots of “samey” stock images aren’t going to work well here either. Whilst some carefully selected, high-quality ones could be incorporated in the right places, it’s extremely important to capture what the patients are currently familiar with – so team shots and photographs of the facilities would feature highly. Video would also be used to showcase the practice, introduce the staff and bring patient testimonials to life.

Text content

Whilst accuracy is extremely important, the text content for this particular website needs to be more akin to the conversational style which the patients are accustomed to at the practice rather than a matter-of-fact regurgitation of standard treatment text. This will be a nice challenge for the content writers but also particularly interesting I suspect.

Blogging, social media and email marketing

There is a great opportunity to build on the excellent dentist : patient relationship by implementing a practice blog, social media and email marketing in the new web framework. Whilst this needs to be done carefully and only with very subtle “sell”, these systems can be used to nurture the current relationships and bring more awareness of the services offered at the practice.

Summary

Whilst it is possible to be “hands off” and simply let an experienced dental website designer get on with developing you website, a better result will be achieved if you spend some time to discuss your requirements in detail before the process starts. This way you will be sure that the website will represent your practice personality much better than if you simply let your designer roll-out another cookie-cutter design. Your website is an extension of the practice and, as such, needs to be harmonised and representative of your business and services.

If you would like Dental Media to develop a bespoke website for your dental business too, please call us on 01332 672548 for clear, no-obligation advice.