Just 10 seconds is all it takes for any visitor on your website to decide if they want to stay on it or move on to the next one. Researchers with Microsoft Research observed and recorded the browsing habits of 2 billion page hits from 205,873 different websites and came out with this conclusion. Isn’t it thought-provoking?
It’s probably true for almost all users using the Internet to find any health solutions. While browsing through any website, users make a decision within a few seconds to stick with it or not. For any healthcare website, the challenges are one step higher than the others as the readers are generally people with limited medical knowledge. They are likely to stick with a website only when they find it informative and user-engaging.
More and more patients are looking online for convenient, useful information that’s right at their fingertips. They are digitally empowered healthcare consumers. To keep them on your practice/hospital website, you need to provide the right content in an interesting website format. In the online world, when patients/potential patients search about you online, your website is usually your first and only chance to make an impression. Most businesses today consider a website as a digital storefront through which they can expand and grow their business. Going by the latest research and statistics, an increasing number of Americans are turning online to make their health decisions. These transformed scenarios of the healthcare industry leave you with no option than to revamp your practice website. Here are few simple yet profound things to keep in mind while hiring a website development company for your practice website.
Get an effective SEO strategy for your website
A website is only useful if people can find it. Based on your target patients, your area of specialization and the location of your practice, get a content strategy designed. Use of specific keywords throughout the content of your webpages helps in ranking the website higher on popular search engines like Goggle, Yahoo or Bing. If your website doesn’t rank well in the search engines, it can mean your patients/potential patients may turn to your competitors whose website ranks higher. An effective SEO strategy also helps build a positive online presence and brand equity.
Check out the company for their content strategy
Content is more than text. It should be informative as well as user-engaging at the same time. As they say, variety is the spice of life — users look for innovative ideas on the Internet that deliver the information they are seeking. The website development company should be able to understand the needs of your patients and deliver content tailored to their needs. You can provide them with some basic patient educational materials that can be used to develop infographics, e-books, images, newsletters and videos to attract more readers. The goal should be to give the readers an experience that no other competitor is offering so that they easily differentiate your brand among others and they will definitely want to engage with it.
Ensure the website development company builds a responsive website for your practice
Responsive web design is an approach aimed at crafting sites so as to provide an optimal viewing experience for users. These also provide an easy platform for interaction as the interface becomes easier to read and navigation can be smoothly done with a minimum of resizing, panning and scrolling — across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors, tablets and all mobile devices).
If your practice website isn’t responsive, it will affect your online ratings. Not only will you lose the business it can bring, it may also cause a serious blow to your online reputation. Your patients today are digital healthcare consumers, who consistently follow you online before making a decision to book an appointment. With the recent changes announced by Google, without a mobile website your future online is bleak.
Selecting the right web design partner for your practice website redesign is a critical decision. It can be a challenging task to decide on a company as you’ll not just bank on them to build a website for your practice but will be entrusting your business and online reputation to them.