Advice needed re: practice web sites

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Can anyone give me any tips regarding setting up a site to promote our practice. Also is it a good, cost effective way of attracting new business?

cheers in advance

s

 

You can try Officite or any one of the commercial health oriented web developers. The advantage of using them over other web developers is that they often fill your site with health related content which may be helpful to your patients without taking up your valuable time to fill in general information. They also will promote your site on search engines. Of course all of this comes at a price.

If an economical web site is important to you, then I would suggest one simple page. I feel that that can be about as effective as a business card.

I wouldn't expect a flood of patients pouring through your door just because you have a website... no matter how simple or full of information that site may be. If you really want to increase your presence and attract more patient through the internet, you will have to have a marketing budget just as with any other form of media advertising. IMHO.

 

If you have a proper Word of Mouth campaign it will be the best and it has a very little cost.
It needs to be properly thought out, for instance you need to ensure that the things that label you privately are used. For instance if you do Archery as a Hobby ensure that your club is near to your practice.
Joseph Foot Mobilisation

 

Hi Simon,

I got ripped off by a web design business and then found someone who new what they we doing. Her advice make it clear, simple and easy to understand.

Think about the average age of your patients and type of patient and gear the site to them.

Mine is a click site ie they scroll through click on what they want to read with no flash. Ive had lots of patients say it was easy to find info.

The website should lead people to book in an appointment, so design it to show that your professionial and understand what your doing.

It helps bring patients in and in this day and age I would think is very important for a practice.

Hope that Helps some.

 

Simon,

A quick Google search will bring up a litany of information on well known 'do's and don'ts' regarding web design (e.g. try not to have any page which is more than 2 clicks away from your home page etc) When I designed mine I visted hundreds of other sites, and started with a basic list of things I liked and things which annoyed me. You have about 15 seconds to impress upon a visitor to your website. If something annoys them, or if they cant easily find what they want as Mike says, then they will hit the back button on their browser and click on the next link down.

Keep it clean and quick to load (avoid fancy things like flash etc), informative and easy to navigate around (no-one wants to feel like they are lost in a maze) and sort out your search engine optimisation (SEO) so you are on page 1 of Google.

Is it cost effective? Mine cost me many many hours of my time, but financially just £10 for the first 2 years and not a penny more. As soon as it brought in one patient it had paid for itself and then some.

Ian

 

After two years of development effort, my podiatry web site is now paying for itself with a regular 600 visitors per month to the home page and recruiting almost one new client per week, resulting in £120 per month additional income (£2,400 overall). Becoming worth the effort!

Foot Wise Podiatry seems to be quite brave in the Podiatry arena, in actually publishing regular fees and those for courses of treatments (isn't this what most initial queries are about?)! Since my practice uses a web-hosted electronic patient records system (PracticePal), it also allows clients to register, book and even cancel their own appointments!

I promote the site through Google Ads (limited to 10 miles of the practice postcode - £15 per month), with links from local GP's web sites and by good design. Hosting costs me £100 pa, with an initial structure development by Howes Communications (see bottom of home page www.footwisepodiatry.co.uk) for around £250. Thereafter I pay nothing, with my use of the StoryEdit system allowing me to make changes and keep a fresh feel to the site. I also suggest lots of detail about the experience and qualifications of staff and services available, also something for newcomers to podiatry: what we do and what to expect at your first visit.

Anything worth doing is worth doing well... I suggest an "I'm here" page with an address and phone number is pretty old hat and a waste of time. Growth has been linear, increasing at a rate of 100 clicks every 3 months. I'm happy to advise further or answer any questions (former 20 years in IT prior to a career change as a private practitioner - standing start 2005, now 2 days per week from a rural practice).

Regards
Gary Denby, Foot Wise Podiatry - owner - practitioner.

 

I have designed a number of different websites. These have ranged from my works website (Community Health Centre), an online store, a forum with 80,000 visitors a month, to the number one free camping website in Australia http://ozcamps.net with 10,000 visitors a month.

What I would recommend is using an open source content management system such as Joomla or Drupal. You can then easily skin it to give your site different looks. It is then easy for you to add content to it such as new articles etc. You can also easily expand the site if you need to by offering an online shop for certain goods or a community forum etc etc.

But start simple and add to it later. But if you go open source your costs will be very cheap ongoing. You may pay someone to set it up for you to start, or if you are reasonably savvy could do it yourself.

Costs to do it yourself would be stuff all. My OzCamps site costs me about $40 a year. Generally to set up the content management systems is only a couple of clicks if your webhost provider has cPanel (which most do).

Cheers
Brett

P.S. The OzCamps website uses Joomla for the structure.

 

Good advice Brekin.
I have developed many sites using both Wordpress and Joomla and they are easy to set up but can be as feature rich and complicated as you want them to be.
However, the new challenge is to drive visitors to your site - no matter how beautiful or ugly it may be - a process largely termed SEO - search engine optimisation.
Many people still have an 'if you build it they will come..' approach to this but unfortunately this isn't the 1990's any more.
My advice is this. If you are setting up a site (and paying someone to do it) make sure they understand the requirements of a 'well -SEO'd site' so that you can gain some search engine rankings and get some traffic. All too often I see fantastic sites that in the words of the owner 'dont get any visitors, and I dont know why'.
As other posters have said, dont forget off-line promotion (that'll be word of mouth and newspapers, magazine etc to you and me) and even simple things like a small sticker on your car with the web address and having it on all your literature/stationery etc.

 

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