The Front Door To Your Dental Practice

Sean Tanner
Nov 1 · 4 min read

A professional website today is more than a nicety. It’s a must if you want your practice to survive.

Today nearly 90% of people use internet search engines to find what they are looking for. Unfortunately it can happen that when they arrive to a prospective dental website they are presented with an incredibly poor representation of that practice. While in the past this may have been relatively negligible, this day and age it’s something you will be judged by. And all too often a prospective patient will get a very low concept of that practice when it may be superb in quality and service!

Factually your website is your front door.

Prospective patients find you through search engines or on local business listings and the first thing they do is look at your website to see who you are, if you are trustworthy and if you provide the service they are looking for.

What do you think happens if this is what they see?

Or even worse!

This may seem ridiculous but web design has come a long way and internet users are nothing if not snobby, expecting elegant as well as functional websites. Those old sites from the 90’s stand out like a sore thumb!

And another version are those cookie-cutter websites churned out with a few changed photos and colors that all look the same but strangely unprofessional.

Think about the last time you visited a website that you had never been to before and the impression it gave you. Did it make you want to visit or get the service they provided?

You want your level of professionalism represented to every prospective patient. That is what will make them choose you.

So having a professional, clean and modern website is no longer a nicety. It is simply a must in today’s world.

What should a professional website look like that invites potential patients? Here are 12 points to consider in designing your dental website:

  1. It should be professional and clean without a lot of clutter to confuse visitors.
  2. The website should be “mobile friendly” meaning that it is designed to look and work well on mobile devices. Most people go online on the phone and I am sure you have seen sites that were basically impossible to navigate or everything misaligned when you visited them.
  3. It should start with a good image which is inviting and pleasing to look at, yet communicates the product. This is your “storefront”. What do you want people to see when they walk by?
  4. Color theme is important. Colors influence people. Red makes people think of pain (especially in the medical field) whereas greens are associated with health and tranquility. The colors you choose should be cohesive.
  5. It should have a call to action which tells visitors what they should do.
  6. It should be informative in a way that gives information that visitors are looking for, yet not so lengthy that it deters them. (How long would you be willing to read if you were looking for a dentist?)
  7. It should have plenty of authentic photos throughout the page. (Most visitors go through the photos and read the titles of the page and sections before anything else.)
  8. It should have a navigation at the top which is easy to use and simple.
  9. There should be an offer or offers near the top of the homepage.
  10. The address, contact info and hours should be clear and easy to find in the footer. (Ever tried to find out how to contact a business when they did not provide the info? Frustrating!)
  11. The various parts of the page should be in short, easy to read sections with related images.
  12. There should be a number of different sub pages, each which covers it’s own service or subject and is easy to find in the navigation. (People do not want to read about dental implants when they are trying to find porcelain veneers.)

While there are many other technical factors, these cover the broad strokes of what a website should have. But most important of all is to assume the view of the potential patient and see what experience they will have when they arrive to the site.

What would you pick?

Bolt Dental Marketing focuses on providing professional, high quality and modern websites that are coded in-house and designed to convert well. And not only do you get excellent customer support, you have access to top of the line design experts, developers and marketing pros to help you grow your practice.

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