Dental Website Conversion: Transforming Visitors into Loyal Patients
Your dental website is one of the most powerful marketing tools you have. It creates a compelling online image that tells users and potential patients who you are and what you have to offer to set you apart from the competition. If you want to achieve dental website conversion from your visitors, keep reading.
When your dental website design is clean, current, user-friendly, and appealing your patients will know your level of care is just as organized and state-of-the-art. How quickly your site loads, the quality of the photos you’re using, the appeal of the color scheme, and so much more can affect someone’s first impression of you and your business.
It’s important to nurture and not neglect your website. Think of it like it’s a living thing, maybe your favorite houseplant or garden greenery. Checking on it regularly is key, because with routine care and maintenance your site will have a healthy, productive lifespan. You’ll also attract and please both your ideal users and search engines (primarily Google) when your site is equipped with everything it needs to run at peak performance.
1. Search engine ranking
Where does your dental website rank? If you don’t know, it’s a good idea to find out, ASAP. Ranking is important because of the two main jobs a search engine has:
- Crawling and indexing the seemingly endless amount of web pages, files, videos, and news that forms the internet’s rich world of content.
- Providing answers to the most frequently searched terms or questions from sites it deems credible.
Search engine ranking is influenced by a variety of factors including how old your site is, what kinds of links you have to related outside sources, relevancy of the content on your site, and so much more. In fact, Google relies on around 200 different factors when determining your site’s rank.
93% of online experiences begin with a search engine.
2. Conversion
Is your dental website design easy to use, with clear calls to action? Remember the last time you visited a site that was really bad? The design was totally outdated and so was the content. We’d be willing to bet you didn’t even take advantage of the offer that brought you there in the first place or find the information you were looking for. Successful conversion (or getting people to do what you want) starts with having a dental website company build a site that uses clear, concise, calls to action. Just remember to keep it simple. Don’t make a potential patient have to jump through hoops to reach your office, because chances are they won’t. Make sure your site navigation is straightforward and uncomplicated.
50% of potential sales are lost because users can’t find information, and 40% of users do not return to a site when their first visit is a negative experience.
3. Mobile optimization
What does your dental website design look like on a mobile device? Designing for dental website conversion in mind means a mobile friendly site that is developed, designed, and optimized so that it functions efficiently on all types of mobile devices. Navigation has to be easy, design elements should be simplified for better usage, content will flow for mobile consumption, phone numbers and addresses are clearly visible/functional, and calls to action are tied to a form or email address for quick communication. How your mobile dental website responds to cell phone users is also important so you can please Google and get more organic search traffic.
62% of companies that designed a website with mobile in mind saw increased sales.
4. Load time
Is your site taking too long to load? The truth is: load time can affect your bottom line. Time has to be on your side when it comes to how long it takes your site to load – on mobile, desktop, and laptop devices. A good dental website design is something that seems so small but can make a big difference in terms of how users interact with your site or if they move on to another practice. Sometimes slow loading time is caused by outdated code or large image files, which can be fixed relatively easily.
47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less, and 40% of people will abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.
5. Current analytics
Are you able to see what kinds of users are coming to your site and what they’re doing? Having the power to review and do something about your website’s user activity is definitely something you need to be doing if you don’t already do it. It’s crucial so that you know what’s working, what’s not, and what changes you can make to mitigate these issues.
Here are a few metrics you should be familiar with:
- How people are finding your website
- How long they’re using it
- What platform they’re using to view it (smartphone, tablet, PC, etc.)
- How many new visitors you get vs. returning visitors
Knowing what your users want or what they’re looking for is going to allow you to ensure your site caters to their every need. It’s important to stay on track of your analytics on a regular, if not daily, basis. This extremely valuable insight provides excellent guidance for creating and/or maintaining a successful site.
90% of business managers believe analytics have the ability to improve sales, and another 62% report they believe analytics can increase sales by more than 20%.
Dental SEO is only half the battle. Getting patients to stay, explore, call, and schedule is the real battle.
Find out how well your site is doing with our Conversion Quiz.
