Website Design Tips for Healthcare Providers

When you’re a healthcare provider, your first priority is your patients. This means marketing and design may not always be your specialty. However, in today’s digital age, healthcare providers are still expected to have a strong and professional online presence. 

So while your website design may not be your top concern, it should still be on your list of priorities. 

The following article will cover just why a well-designed website is important and provide tips on how you can ensure yours is as effective as possible.

Image via pikwizard.com

Why is website design important to healthcare providers?

Think of what you do when you hear about a restaurant or store and want to find out more. Do you turn to your computer to do some research? Perhaps look at the reviews, check out the menus or products, and even visit their social media profiles?

Well, the same goes for those who want to find a healthcare provider. In fact, a whopping 73% of consumers use search engines to research their treatment and 41% of consumers say that social media content will influence their choice of hospital or treatment center. Additionally, 5% of all Google searches are health related.

People that are researching physical therapists, nursing homes, and optometrists are the most likely to use search engines. But this doesn’t mean that digital marketing isn’t just as important for practices that fall under other categories. The below table shows the percentage of healthcare consumers that ran a search before booking an appointment. 

It’s clear that if you’re not cultivating your website and other digital collateral, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to connect with potential patients.

If you’re not investing time and money into creating a great website, you’re neglecting valuable leads. The average cost of a healthcare lead is $286, so letting these slip through the cracks has the potential to greatly harm your profits.

How can you capitalize on the vital opportunity that digital presents? What can you do to stand out from the crowd and distinguish your practice? Read on to find out!

 Image via pikwizard.com

 Design tips for your website

1. Pick the right colors: You may be familiar with the psychology behind color. Studies have shown that certain colors evoke certain feelings and emotions. Choosing the right colors for your website design is especially important in the health and wellness field. You want to pick a color palette that will convey trust, capability, and professionalism.

Colors such as blue and green are good options for those in the health and wellness field. Blue represents responsibility, stability, trust, and integrity. Sites with blue will help patients feel confident in your abilities. Green is associated with positivity, tranquility, and nature, so it has a calming and reassuring effect. Working these into your website and/or logo design is a smart idea.

Image via Pikwizard

2. Ensure a smooth and professional layout with easy navigation: Your site should operate like a well-oiled machine. A confusing layout with cluttered web pages will reflect poorly on your practice and discourage patients from contacting you. Your website is your digital store (or practice) front, so it needs to be as welcoming and professional as your own office.

Keep in mind that those researching you online may be feeling poorly or suffering with injuries, and the last thing they need is for your site to cause further frustration. Make your website easy to understand and navigate, so that patients can find the information they need quickly and without hassle. 

3. Use appropriate and uniform imagery, fonts and graphics: Your branding should remain consistent throughout your website. As a healthcare practitioner, it’s crucial that the images you use on your website are not only relevant, but appropriate. While this may seem like an obvious tip, we’ve all likely been subject to bad graphics and imagery. Images are certainly a powerful tool! 

First of all, each of the images you use should have the same “vibe” as one another. The graphics you use should all follow the same color palette and you should define the fonts you will use for X and Y etc and only stick with those. Ensure your font is professional and stay away from playful fonts like Comic Sans. You want your site to be uniform throughout, and the tone of your images and the consistency of your graphics and text will help accomplish this. 

Image via Design Wizard

4. Include an About Us section: Patients will want to see and discover more about who they’ll potentially be dealing with. An About section (complete with photos of staff!) is therefore important within the health and wellness industry. Introducing yourself and your staff will make patients feel less intimidated and provide them with information that they’ll use to make the most informed decision. 

5. Use CTAs: A Call to Action, or CTA, urges visitors to your website to complete a certain action, predefined by you. Anyone who’s been online before has likely seen and completed a CTA. Common CTAs include Contact us, Browse our products, Find out more, and Sign up now. Your website pages should include CTAs to help direct visitors towards useful actions.

For instance, you may want a Book now CTA that links to an online booking platform. If you send out a monthly newsletter, you may like a Sign up for our newsletter CTA where visitors can enter their email. The CTAs you choose to include on your site will differ based on your objectives, but incorporating these within your website will certainly help you achieve the results you want. 

Image via Design Wizard

6. Incorporate SEO content: As a health and wellness provider, your patients will likely live within commuting distance from your practice. Because your patient list is dependent on location, ranking within the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS) is essential.

For instance, let’s say you’re a physical therapist in Chicago. You want to compete for a top position within the SERPS for phrases such as physical therapist Chicago, Chicago physical therapy, physical therapy Chicago and physical therapists in Chicago. This means incorporating these search terms within the content on your site, and ensuring you register your business and location on your Google my Business page. 

Having a solid website and strong online presence is vital for health and wellness practitioners today. Your website will tell patients and potential patients who you are, what you do, and why they should choose you. Investing the time and money it takes to build a website that will attract patients is a wise idea that will result in the growth of your practice.

Ellan Dineen is the Marketing Associate at Design Wizard. When she’s not hard at work in the Marketing Department, Ellan can be found en route to foreign lands with a book in her hand and a podcast in her ear. With a Master’s in English and Diploma in Social Media Marketing, she knows the importance of staying up-to-date with the industry’s latest trends and insights and is keen to pass these tips on to her readers.