There are many things to consider when building your website, and there is a big difference between a general website that just about works, and one that is truly great which generates a stream of enquiries for your business.
Firstly, the initial first impression is very important, as the feeling people will get from your website will stay with them, and they will think your treatments are similar.
You should aim for feelings similar to Fresh, New, Experts, Clean, Safe, Experienced, Quality and avoid ones such as Old, dark, slow, problems and confusing. Ask people what they think of your current website and you may be surprised what they say. It is vital in the planning stages when picking out a colour scheme and logo for your brand.
You should know your target audience, and not only at a general level, but at a treatment-based level.
The website should speak to these people, match their desires and expectations. For example, an exclusive cosmetic dental clinic will have a different audience than a dental clinic focused on dental treatments for kids. Understand your audience, see what they look for and provide it.
We always ask potential clients to look at dental clinics around the world, see different designs, styles, functionally and approaches so they can make notes of items that they like.
This will help your designer a lot, giving them a clear idea of what you would like.
Simple and logical Menu structure and content are vital to ensure your website is truly great. Your website visitors should not have to double think which menu item to click, it should be so obvious and clear that they know where to click to get the information they need. In tests we have completed, if a user has to click 3 times before they find the information that they are looking for they will leave the website and go to another, this is something you do not want.
Be careful with the content that you use on your website, any pictures that contain graphic but realistic photos of blood and similar items will scare people away from your dental clinic, its best to show them the happy end results rather than graphic photos.
The main thing that makes a dental clinic website great will be its performance, if it is visible in Google, ranking for search terms relating to your treatments and producing patient enquiries for your dental clinic. Remember, this is the reason you have a dental clinic website, if it doe not produce results like this, something is wrong. Issues such as poor performance of useability (ie people leaving the website straight away) or visibility in Google (not ranking for your targeted keywords) are due to a poorly designed website and marketing plan.