Five Must-Haves for Dental Websites
If you’re building a new dental website (or upgrading your old one), it won’t do you much good to create something that looks nice but is unreliable and inefficient. The best dental websites have five important things in common to keep them running smoothly, and they’re things that you probably never even noticed.
Hosting you can depend on
The hosting provider you select for your website is a more important decision than you may think. Do yourself a favor and prioritize quality over cost. Not only does the capability of your provider determine the speed of your website and how frequently it goes down, it can also give Google a hint as to your credibility. If your site is hosted among a pool of online companies that push online pharmaceuticals, you can bet Google will take that into consideration when determining your search rank.
Security and HIPAA compliance to put your mind at ease
HIPAA requires that information patients will be submitting through forms on dental websites be kept secure and encrypted. To do that, you’ll need to make sure your site is set up with a secure sockets layer (SSL) certificate. Want an added benefit of having a secure website? Google will give you a ranking boost for having an SSL certificate installed.
A web platform that does what you need it to do
We’ve all seen those DIY website builders. Drag and drop design is easy, but it requires bloated code behind the scenes to make it work. As a result, those sites tend to be slower and have limited SEO potential, delivering an overall bad user experience. WordPress dental websites, on the other hand, are one of the most popular platforms in use today since they are efficiently coded and SEO friendly.
Where you do want ease of use is your content management. After your site is completed and launched, you’ll want to have the ability to easily make additions and edits yourself. Websites with content management systems (CMS) built in, like WordPress, allow you to keep your website up-to-date without being tied to a website agency to make ongoing edits for you (and charging you every time).
Integrations that allow you to use other software
An increasing number of patient interactions are occurring online, including scheduling, health history form completion, bill payment, and virtual visits. If you are offering any of these services through third party software, make sure your dental website easily connects with them so your systems work smoothly and your patients enjoy a seamless online experience.
Detailed analytics that keep you informed
If you invest in a website, you’ll want to know how well it’s performing. For a free solution, you can use Google Analytics to report on a wide variety of web traffic statistics. To really keep an eye on your dental website marketing, use a call tracking software like Smart Market Dental to link to both your website and your patient management software.
Get the dental website you’ve always wanted from the team that always delivers.
Golden Proportions Marketing has built more than 500 great dental websites for practices just like yours. Our team of marketing strategists, graphic designers, coders, writers, and SEO experts will work together to create a site that is uniquely perfect for your practice. Contact us today to discuss your dental website design!
