What happens when a dental website gets stale?

Can you afford the negative effects of an underperforming website?

If you take a close look at the current dental website landscape you will see that it is quite diverse, from very modern, high-functioning sites through to those which are 10 years old or more. Dentists hanging on with stale websites never fail to surprise me, particularly given that an excellent practice website with good Google search rankings delivers more new patient enquiries than any other method except word-of-mouth referral.

It’s easy to demonstrate that the return on a new practice website is usually very good indeed and we can also show that the disadvantages from an old, stale website are considerable.

Why then do some dentists persist with a dodgy old website which is clearly doing them a major disservice?

Lack of knowledge

Despite the number of marketers advising them about the benefits of a great website, it’s still very clear that many dentists still don’t realise the full implications and as such persevere with what they have; often for far too long.

Other priorities

Clearly priorities change in any business and dentistry is no exception. So we see projects being delayed whilst practices are refurbished, sold etc.  That’s completely understandable.

Budget

There are numerous challenges for all business’s budget these days and so it’s unsurprising that projects get shelved from time-to-time. However, what I would say here is that it’s very important to understand the relative return-on-investment of projects and prioritise accordingly. Too often we see websites relegated in importance despite delivering exceptional returns.

Apathy

Unfortunately this also plays a part. Sometimes a dentist will completely understand the benefits that a new website can bring, have no other apparent reasons for failing to proceed, but still not progress with the project. When we check a year or so down the track, the old website is still in place. That’s probably the hardest one to explain.

Measuring the performance of a website

So how do we measure the performance of a website and determine when it’s time for an upgrade?

We do this using a variety of tools:

• Google Analytics – this is the free tool which allows owners to collect wide-ranging data from their website. There really is a huge amount of information there and so it’s not for the faint-hearted, particularly in its latest format, GA4. This is the primary tool we use for reporting on website performance for dentists, distilling the main information into a more manageable visual form.
• Search Console – this is another Google tool which records other types of data, much of it related to the technical performance of a website. Google now looks way more closely at the technical aspects of a website and whether they meet latest guidelines and this is a great tool for helping assess that.

With analytics we can see key “top level” data about the website, for example user traffic trends, most popular pages, time spent on site and conversions/goals. The latter is a measure of how many people actually go on to contact the practice, either via a contact form, chatbot or telephone call. By keeping track of this data over time, we can see when performance begins to degrade.

As a website gets older, content can progressively become stale and unappealing. This is when user engagement falls away, Google search positions degrade and traffic drops. Web publishing technology is ever-changing as are the ways Google uses to evaluate the technical competence of a site. If you aren’t meeting current best practice, then this will also be detrimental for your website’s overall performance and to an increasing degree, where it ranks in the search engines.

Because we manage hundreds of websites for dentists, we have a lot of experience with the various performance metrics and it’s relatively easy to see when an upgrade is due. This might be a basic refresh of some website content, for example when the performance of a particular page falls away, or more large-scale and warranting a full website re-design.

We report this type of information each month for our clients who have marketing campaigns managed by us and by and large, they tend to follow our advice when it comes to website update time. However, there are numerous dentists out there who had a website built and then didn’t really bother with it thereafter. Typically it’s those cases where the site eventually becomes stale and performance quickly falls away.

Summary

Without maintenance and periodic updates and upgrades, a dental practice website will begin to under-perform leading to lower Google rankings, poor user engagement and progressively fewer enquiries.

Tools and techniques exist to monitor the performance of a site with time and these can be used to indicate when maintenance and/or a full update are due.

It’s very clear that managing your dental website really is important and that you need to intervene in good time to ensure performance is maintained and the all-important new patient enquiries keep flowing. If you don’t have the time or experience to do this yourself, we recommend seeking the services of an experienced third-party to assist.

If you need help with your own practice website or a complimentary assessment of how it’s performing, please get in touch with the team at Dental Media on 01332 672548 for expert advice.