Your healthcare company deserves a website that attracts patients and boosts revenue.
At Printvic.io , we provide cutting-edge web design services for healthcare companies.
Over the years, we’ve accumulated a ton of web design tips for healthcare companies.
Here are some of the most important tips to remember when building a healthcare website:
1. Display social proof legally and ethically
The main purpose of your healthcare website is to motivate patients to reach out and book an appointment. Your goal is to maximize the percentage of website visitors that perform the action that you want them to take, such as submitting a contact form. In web design, this is known as conversion rate optimization.
One of the best ways to boost your conversion rate is to display compelling social proof, such as testimonials, case studies, stats, logos of awards/certifications, etc.
If you’re going to leverage patient testimonials or case studies, make sure that it’s done legally and ethically. The healthcare space has various restrictions depending on your location and/or niche. Check the law surrounding your practice and make sure that it’s legal to display testimonials or case studies with detailed patient information.
If it’s legal, you also need to get written permission from your patient to publicly display it on your website.
There are typically less restrictions on other forms of social proof such as stats or logos of awards/certifications, but we still recommend double checking the law surrounding your practice and reaching out to any issuers of your awards/certifications to get permission to display them on your website.
2. Implement robust security measures to avoid exposing sensitive patient information
While it’s crucial to not blatantly display sensitive patient information on your public website, it’s also vital to not store sensitive information in the backend unless you have airtight security measures in place.
The most common source of this problem is the contact form on your website. When patients submit a contact form, they often include sensitive patient information throughout their inquiry. This information will get stored in the backend of your website, and you’d have a legal problem on your hands if hackers got into it.
So, to prevent hacks, we recommend using a dedicated server (not a shared server) on a secure web hosting platform such as Cloudways. From there, you’d also want to integrate Cloudflare for extra security measures and a WordPress security plugin such as Wordfence.
Also, be sure to keep all of your technology updated to the latest version, as it’s easier for hackers to infiltrate your software if it’s outdated. You should be updating your WordPress core, theme, and plugins at least once a month and whenever a security patch is released. This is one of the many things that we handle for our clients on our maintenance plans. For more information on that, check out our top 7 reasons why you need a WordPress maintenance plan.
3. Use prominent calls-to-action
Making the next step easy and enticing for the user is essential in getting them to convert.
Your call-to-action (CTA) could simply be a button to “contact us” or “get in touch” but ideally it would be something more specific if applicable – such as “book an appointment” or “free consultation”. Specific CTAs are more clear and appear to have more value, which often boosts the conversion rate slightly.
More importantly, your CTA buttons should be relatively large and should be seen frequently throughout the website so that it’s always top-of-mind and easy to take the next step. You can also include the CTA in the header and make the header stick to the top of the page as the user scrolls, so that it’s always in sight.
Bonus tip: try to have only 1-2 prominent CTAs to focus the user’s attention and to not overwhelm them with too many different options. Users have short attention spans and if they’re at all overwhelmed or confused, they might leave your website and go to the next competitor.
4. Use an online booking system
Your website presents an opportunity to streamline your operations.
If it makes logistical sense for your healthcare company, it might be worth integrating an appointment booking system on your website. This could be public for anyone to book or a password-protected area for only existing patients to book.
Having an online booking system eliminates a lot of phone calls and back-and-forth emails to get appointments booked, saving time and cutting administrative costs for your healthcare company. It also makes the process more enjoyable for your patients!
There are tons of third-party software that can be integrated onto your website for easy and reliable appointment scheduling. It could be something simple like Calendly or something more comprehensive and niche-specific like Petal. Whatever platform you choose, just make sure that it’s secure and complies with the healthcare industry’s privacy requirements.
5. Implement a modern design and optimize the conversion rate
In today’s modern world, users have high expectations for design when they browse the web. If your website looks old, outdated, sloppy, or simply ugly, many users will assume that it correlates to the quality of your services.
So, be sure to invest in high-end modern design that instills an immediate WOW factor.
From there, you should also focus on optimizing the conversion rate. The design aesthetic is only 1 piece of the conversion rate puzzle. We recommend split testing (also known as A/B testing) to compare the conversion data of different headlines, images, colors, layouts, social proof, order of sections, etc, to see what produces the best bottom-line results. Always be testing!