How to make a medical website for doctors, nurses and aestheticians: 3 changes you must make now!
Do you own a medical or aesthetic clinic with a website? I will tell you the 3 changes I made that turned my completely useless medical website into a magnet for new high-paying clients. The good news is that you can make these changes too.
So, I’ve given you the good news, the bad news is that like 99% of doctors, nurses and aesthetic practitioners your website probably sucks.
The quality of your website is super important, because ALL prospective patients are going to check out your website at least once before making a decision on whether to trust you to treat them. That’s even if they get on your website in the first place.
The Challenge - 15 Second Rule
You've got 14.9 seconds to convince new visitors to stay and look around your site. Yes, that's right 14.9 seconds! That's probably around the same amount of time it takes for someone to decide whether they like the taste of a new flavour of ice cream. After 15 seconds, most people will click away before even scrolling down your homepage.
And this really matters!
If you are able to get someone to visit your website in the first place and let’s be clear, that is difficult enough - if you do get someone on your website - you must WOW your visitors in less than 14.9 seconds and get them to STAY. If new visitors click away before 15 seconds, this tells Google that your site isn't even worth putting in front of people who use the search engine, making things even worse. If visitors click away quickly from your website, Google won’t send more visitors, it will send you fewer and then after a while, your site won’t show up at all in organic searches, you will be forced to pay for your website traffic.
Talk to Your Audience
So the most important and number 1 change I made and you could do too is to TALK THE LANGUAGE OF YOUR AUDIENCE ESPECIALLY ON YOUR HOME PAGE. Like it or not, the truth is that website visitors are not interested in me or you. They are only interested in what you can do for THEM.
They have the WIIFM mindset. What's In It For Me? And you must speak their language. So, you must clearly STATE how you can get them from A to B. What is the transformation that you offer?
Rather than describing processes, your qualifications, your experience, and your special technique, you need to describe the transformation your patients or clients experience being treated by you. Remember, they don’t care about you. If they have a problem, you have to let them know immediately they landed on your homepage, that they are in the right place and that you can HELP them get that transformation.
So, I am a vein specialist and on my homepage, I stopped talking about Sclerotherapy, Phlebectomy, Endovenous Laser blah, blah, blah - they just don’t care about that.
I started talking about the pain, discomfort and unsightliness of varicose veins and the worries and concerns about phlebitis and leg ulcers that people have. I started talking about how great my patients felt afterwards and what the treatment did in terms of getting their legs looking better.
I told them it was simple: a walk-in, walk-out procedure without general anaesthesia. Do you see what I mean?
You only get one chance to make a first impression and you only get 14.9 seconds on your website. So shout out to your prospective patients. Shout out what’s in it for them. Not about yourself, not about your processes and qualifications - they don’t care about you. They only care about what you can do for them.
Now don’t get me wrong. You should have an “About” page with your qualifications and your experience etc, etc, but remember people will only look at this after they have made up their minds to get in touch or to make an appointment. Don’t put any of that sort of stuff on your homepage.
Now before I move on to the 2nd important change I made, let me just say that if you really want to super-charge your website and make it do all the hard work and heavy lifting for you before your patients even pick up the phone, there are 12 elements your website should have.
There are far too many to cover in this blog post in detail, so I've put together a PDF which is easy to follow and which gives you the 12 actions you can take right now to turbocharge your website.
Even If you have all the 12 elements of a great website, it is likely that new visitors will still want to know more and the telephone is usually the step before booking an appointment. Sure, you need a contact page, but most people will still want to call you and your team.
So, the second change is to make it super easy for people and publish your telephone number on every page. Invite people to call you in the header and footer of every page.
Have a Call to Action (CTA)
As most of your visitors will be on their smartphones, a link to make the call on every page is even better. A click is so much easier than using the keypad.
Collect Email Addresses
The third change is to find a way to collect email addresses from website visitors. Even if you have all the 12 elements of a great website in place, with the most carefully designed and content-rich homepage many people will need to get to know you and your clinic before booking.
One of the best ways of building a relationship is to send your visitors a regular email newsletter with valuable content.
These 3 changes will make a MASSIVE difference and your website will become a magnet for fee-paying patients. As I have said earlier there are 9 other adjustments and changes that will really turbocharge your website.
I have visited over 100 private practice websites and fewer than 1% have all of these elements. They are super-easy to implement and if you do, you will be ahead of 99% of the field.
The link to the full list of 12 actionable changes is here.
Talk the language of your target audience on your home page
Have a call to action on every page - ask your audience to call you
Collect email addresses
Then the Global Financial Crash hit and all of a sudden, my private practice crashed as well. Almost overnight, I went from super-busy to an empty diary. I was idle. I was mortgaged up to my neck, my children were in private schools, I had a lease on 2 cars and my income had fallen off a cliff.
I tried various marketing strategies: free consultations, open events, leaflet drops, and newspaper ads. I laid off staff to cut expenses and developed a scarcity mindset. Nothing really seemed to help. I needed to attract more patients, or my clinic would run out of cash.
I read every marketing book I could get hold of, I went on business courses, I hired a business coach, I hired a web designer. I found out quickly that I needed to pay attention to my website.
I realised that I understood my patients better than anyone else and I was the best person to write relevant content. Generic business coaches could only take me so far.
I decided to take ownership of my own marketing.
I also discovered the power of video and storytelling. I have always had an interest in photography, and I turned that interest into videography.
I invested in a good camera, and audio recorders and made dozens of videos in my consulting room. This early "taking head" is still my best-performing video with over 1 million views. Although I haven't seen a patient for nearly 18 months and my clinic has been closed for 12 months, this simple video got nearly 5K views in the last 28 days.
I invested in a professional video for my home page. I cringe at it now, but this one video gave startling results. As a result of that, I developed an interest in Youtube, video and making content for my website.
I learnt the hard way how to attract private patients and now that I no longer treat vein patients myself, my mission is to help doctors in private practice to attract patients to their practice or clinic.
It's not easy, but I can provide a proven road map. I am now helping doctors start and grow their own private practice based on over 15 years of "learning the hard way".
I can help you too!