![\"mistake](\"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/mistakes-150x150.jpg\")
Here are the top ten errors to avoid when starting out on your new dental practice website. You can use this list to check what your designer is proposing to deliver to make sure that your website doesn’t just look good, but functions well too.<\/p>\n
Unsurprisingly, web design is affected by trends and never more-so than the last couple of years where the “WordPress” template tsunami has hit. So many sites these days look very similar and are burdened by widgets, gadgets and effects which serve little purpose other than confusing users. Similarly we see lots of new dentist’s websites where the screen is taken up by a big, “flashy” image which leaves you pondering where the navigation actually is.<\/p>\n
Clearly the aesthetics of a website are very important, but form needs to be balanced with function to ensure that your users can find the information they are looking for, quickly and efficiently. So by all means incorporate some great images and a few interesting effects on your website, but don’t forget to balance this with great website usability<\/a> too.<\/p>\n This one often follows on from the point above where site owners go too minimalist in their approach. Home pages which have virtually no text content may look pretty but your users and<\/span> the search engines won’t make much of them. Once again we have to balance form with function, so you need to include enough text for the users and also sufficient for Google to work with. Irrespective of what you may be told, minimalist page content does not work well for Google unless the website concerned has extremely strong authority and exceptional off-page SEO. This is also important for your treatment pages – several hundred words will typically work better in the search engines than a few short paragraphs.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What I mean by this is writing your text more for search engines than for real readers. Google has moved on a lot since 2012 and it’s no longer necessary to cram lots of keywords on to your page. Yes, you still need to have some of them in there and also support them contextually with other similar keywords, but the guidance now is to write in a way that your users will find most useful. Google is now incredibly adept at understanding web page content so you don’t need to zero-in quite some much with your keywords these days. Overuse can be very counter productive.<\/p>\n There was a trend for mystery navigation a number of years ago; another design fad which took off but fortunately was short-lived. It may have been quite “funky” but it failed miserably from a usability perspective. By ‘mystery’ I mean web page symbols which worked as website links but wasn’t clear as such to users. So for example using odd little symbols to represent links to other sections of the website rather than simple, clear text. Remember that users are fickle and most of them have no clue what the designer had in mind when they conceived the funky navigation system they added to your website.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, odd-ball navigation seems to be sneaking back in again, but my advice is to avoid the temptation to be “trendy” and keep it clear and meaningful. Anything that requires the use of additional text such as “click here to enter our website” is an instant fail – it just shouldn’t be necessary.<\/p>\n Websites which create empathy with their users work much better than those which don’t. So pages which incorporate good images of the team, facilities, patient testimonials etc tend to be much more engaging than those which rely solely on stock images from on-line libraries. If your budget allows, try to get a good suite of images for use on your website and your practice literature.<\/p>\n One of the points above touched on over-optimising pages for search engines, which is counter-productive. Conversely, no optimisation is also very bad. There are a number of elements within a web page which have to be structured and used correctly to present properly for Google. Often these are skimped on by lazy designers which we discuss elsewhere in this blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n This one is fairly old now but we still do get enquiries for websites without mobile optimisation where the client wants to save some money – but this really is false economy. The few hundreds pounds saved will be lost very quickly if you consider the users who will bounce off to your competitor’s website through frustration because yours doesn’t work on their mobile ‘phone!<\/p>\n This possibly falls into the “form and function” category but so often we see websites which look quite good but are technically very poor. This could mean bad coding standards, poor security (WordPress is notorious for being compromised), slow loading speeds, broken links and more. Get your designer to demonstrate that all of these aspects have been taken into account before you accept your new website.<\/p>\n We still see websites which have Hotmail email addresses or other similar “free” versions; mobile ‘phones as the contact number, no contact form and more. You need to present a professional image in a user friendly format. So make sure you use a domain name based email address, prominent telephone details and a simple contact form with error checking. As I noted above, users are fickle so don’t put them off with unprofessional contact information or systems which they find hard to use. Also consider how all of those contact details will display on your website when it’s in mobile format – are they all still prominent?<\/p>\n Website which play music or have spooky voice-overs are way out-of-date so please don’t do it. You may like it, but for certain, the vast majority don’t. So please avoid.<\/p>\n Whilst it’s tempting to let your web designer just get on with your new website, it pays to keep a watching brief to make sure that they don’t go off course and start implementing funky stuff simply to show off their creativity whilst forgetting what users really want. Please use the list above to help keep them on track and to ensure that the website which is delivered truly does meet the “form and<\/strong> function” criteria.<\/p>\n If you need more advice on building the best possible website for your dental practice, please contact the Dental Media web team directly on 01332 672548<\/strong>. We provide no-obligation advice and we’ll be very pleased to assist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Avoid these errors when embarking on a new website project. Here are the top ten errors to avoid when starting out on your new dental practice website. You can use this list to check what your designer is proposing to …<\/p>\nNo text for the search engines<\/h3>\n
Over-optimisation for search engines<\/h3>\n
‘Mystery’ navigation<\/h3>\n
Over-use of ‘stock’ images<\/h3>\n
No website optimisation<\/h3>\n
Failure to optimise for mobile<\/h3>\n
Technical mistakes<\/h3>\n
Obscure or unprofessional contact details<\/h3>\n
No music please!<\/h3>\n
Summary<\/h3>\n