Dental website upgrades – when and why?

Updating your website every 2 – 3 years makes sense….

Whilst some may consider that an article of this nature is simply designed to create new business, I hope to show that this is not the case and in fact that it’s in a dentist’s best interest to keep their web presence as current as possible.

The world of dental web design moves quickly and competition is quite intense – in turn this has stimulated design companies to seek out and implement new techniques such as responsive design and state-of-the art content management platforms in order to differentiate. Consequently, many of the latest websites for dentists are considerably ahead of similar developments in comparable sectors such as the legal profession and pharmacy. This rapid progression also means that dentists who haven’t upgraded for several years are left with a web presence which starts to look very dated and also doesn’t “work” well to attract new patients.

As the realisation spreads that the web offers by far the best return on marketing spend, more and more dentists go online with the latest website that helps them make a quick jump ahead of their local competition – at least whilst the website remains fresh.

My website is 3 years old – why do I need to update?

This is a perfectly reasonable question, particularly now that budgets are tight and all marketing costs need to be justified. Here are 3 key reasons:

• your website is a primary tool for generating new patient enquiries – if it looks dated it will be less attractive for visitors who will look elsewhere.
• new web authoring techniques emerge regularly – this includes new coding techniques to make your website run faster as well as optimisation for display on mobile devices. With users switching to mobile very quickly, mobile optimisation using responsive design is one of the most important developments in the last 18 months.
• Google – love them or loathe them, if we don’t keep up with Google our web marketing efforts will fall flat. Google is now putting increased emphasis on how a website is designed and the quality of the content therein – if the infrastructure is outdated or the content is stale, or worse, stuffed with keywords, expect your ranking position to slip away.

How often do I need to update my dental website?

Budget has to come first but maintaining a smart and highly functional web presence needs to be a key marketing priority. Our advice would be as follows:

• add new content to your site regularly. A blog is excellent for this but also keep your main site content fresh too. Google rewards fresh, high quality content.
• undertake a full website re-vamp every 2 or 3 years. Whilst each case is different, chances are that web design techniques will have moved forward considerably and your existing site functionality and appearance may be obsolete.

Summary

By avoiding latest design fads and sticking to fundamental principles, it is possible to build a website that will last for 2 – 3 years without becoming too dated. However, because the web moves incredibly quickly and particularly because the dental marketing sector is quite progressive, websites more than 3 years old tend to look quite dated and don’t perform well when compared to newer versions.

Return on investment from a modern, well built, Google prominent website is typically excellent so it really does pay to budget appropriately for regular updates. To see why this might be much more affordable than you think, please call us on 01332 672548.