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A well-designed, engaging website with good search positions is undeniably one of the best ways to acquire new patients. Even a long-established practice with exceptional word-of-mouth referrals, still needs a good quality website even if only to maintain business credibility and to provide a reference source for patients, old and new.<\/p>\n
However, the performance of websites varies hugely, with the worst delivering very little at all, through to the best which can deliver several new enquiries per day. But what are the main reasons for this huge variation in performance and what can you do about it if you are unfortunate enough to be on the wrong end of the scale?<\/p>\n
The old versus the new<\/strong><\/p>\n This one may seem obvious but it’s perhaps not quite so clear cut as you might imagine. Whilst an outdated web design which simply looks stale and boring is never likely to perform well, new websites can also under-perform too. This is generally because the architecture of the site is simply too cluttered or the navigation so unfriendly that the user simply heads elsewhere. There seems to be a trend of over-complex websites at the moment where the designer threw in all the “bells-and-whistles” simply because they could but forgot about clarity of information and ease of use.<\/p>\n So whilst old, outdated websites are typically quite grim; new but poorly conceived websites can also perform badly. New does not necessarily mean good.<\/p>\n Incorrect targeting<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n You may have a fresh dental web design<\/a> but does it align with the market you are targeting? A prime example re-worked here at Dental Media involved an implant website which used photographs of young smiley models rather than demographic appropriate imagery. This was a classic case of the designer failing to understand what the dentist was actually looking for and delivering something entirely inappropriate.<\/p>\n Of course it’s not just the images you use on the website; similarly your web copy needs to be written with the target audience firmly in mind – for example, a specialist who is targeting referrals from GDPs will likely require a completely different slant to the general dentist who’s main focus is the general public. So ensure that you designer can also provide the right type of website copy to complement the correct style of images.<\/p>\n Ranking position<\/strong><\/p>\n Here’s another obvious one which doesn’t need much explanation. Around 93% of all web search traffic in the UK goes via Google. Of that, 90% plus goes via those sites on page one. So simply put, if you aren’t on page one of Google, new website or not, then don’t expect to receive many visits – at least not from “organic” (free) search. So you must understand that it’s no use simply having a new website if it isn’t ranking. You will likely need a structured search engine optimisation<\/a> campaign to improve your ranking positions over time, possibly coupled with a pay-per-click campaign to pull traffic in via the paid channel.<\/p>\n It’s also just worth revisiting the scenario where a long-establish but outdated and boring website still ranks well on page one. This is more frequent than you might think, but chances are that even though the website gets decent traffic, it still fails to convert to enquiries simply because it’s so bad. As we covered in an earlier blog, this is a great opportunity to leverage on the existing ranking positions with a new website design.<\/p>\n The wrong type of traffic<\/strong><\/p>\n All web traffic is useful right? Wrong. Often we see site visit data where lots have users have been gleaned from social media or poorly configured AdWords (PPC) campaigns. Bounce rates i.e. where the user lands on your website but goes elsewhere immediately, can be as high as 90% or more for this type of traffic, indicating that the vast majority of the visitors aren’t really interested in your services. So for example they clicked out of curiosity when your advert landed in their Facebook feed but they had very little intent when they got to your website.<\/p>\n So the quality of traffic can vary significantly and just because someone tells you that you can get lots of visits from social media or paid channels, doesn’t always mean that it will be useful. Particularly so if those campaigns are set up badly.<\/p>\n Summary<\/strong><\/p>\n There are some obvious reasons why your dental practice website may be under-performing, e.g. poor Google positions, but also some less obvious one such as a new website with poor configuration and high level but low quality traffic.<\/p>\n To really perform your site needs to be well designed, engaging, correctly targeted and with good search engine positions. If you are running paid traffic campaigns, these need to be set up correctly too. Failure to get any of these elements right will lead to sub-optimal performance.<\/p>\n If you have concerns about you website’s performance and would like to take advantage of a free audit, please contact the Dental Media web team on 01332 672548<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Why some dental web designs under-perform and what you can do about it. A well-designed, engaging website with good search positions is undeniably one of the best ways to acquire new patients. Even a long-established practice with exceptional word-of-mouth referrals, …<\/p>\n