Website Must-Haves

Website Must-Haves

In this digital age, your website often serves as your first impression to prospective patients, team members, even joint venture or networking partners. It can also support all your marketing initiatives, serve as a central location to house your marketing messages and act as a funnel for your social media campaigns. It can be an education portal for both prospects and patients alike. Your website should be your practice’s home base, if you will. Therefore, you want to ensure that it represents you and your practice accurately and well.

Since your website serves multiple purposes, creating a site you’re proud of is wise investment of your time and money. And since we’re dedicated to the success of chiropractors, we pulled together these helpful tips for building a strong website presence. Does your website pass the must-haves test?

Homepage Tips

The main purpose of your website homepage is to signal to visitors that they’re in the right place. First of all, it needs to “look” like your practice because you’ve used your logo and company colors.  It needs to “feel” like your practice because you’ve written it in your unique voice and personality.  Most importantly, you only have most visitors’ attention for a few seconds, so your homepage needs to quickly communicate the “main idea” of your practice with words and images “above the fold” (within the first screen that appears without scrolling).

Once you’ve caught their attention, your homepage should also persuade visitors to explore and read on. Easy-to-understand navigation links across the top should lead them to the information they are seeking.

A welcome video on your Homepage can also be very powerful. If you’re a customer of ChiroTV Network, a website player can be installed that features the presentation of the week on autopilot. This shows visitors from the start that your practice educates its patients.

Checklist of must-haves for your Homepage:

• Makes a good first impression, pleasing to the eye
• Design is clean and uncluttered
• Important information is “above the fold” (in the first “screen” that appears without scrolling down)
• Main navigation is easy to understand and use
• The words on the page resonate with your ideal patient
• “Call to Action” (what you want visitors to do next—like Contact Us, go to the About page, or other action) is clear and prominent

If you need a new website . . .

If you are considering a website overhaul or don’t have one yet, there are many modern, inexpensive do-it-yourself templates from which to choose. But it does take time and a bit of know-how to manipulate even the simplest of templates. If you decide to hire a professional team, look at sample work first, and get a few references! Website development is notorious for delays and undependable contractors, much like home renovations! Because your website is often the first thing people see, it’s wise to buy the most attractive and functional site you can afford.

Checklist of must-haves for your general website design:

• Branding using your logo and complementary colors, images and “tone of voice” that all reflect the personality of your practice
• Phone number near the top of every page, made “clickable” on mobile devices so visitors can instantly dial your office
• Headlines and sub headlines with larger/bolded fonts to make it easier for skimmers to find what they’re looking for
• Social media icons that link to your social media platforms
• Sign-up boxes to opt-in to your newsletter

About Page Tips

The “About” page on a website is the second-most-read page after the homepage. This is not surprising, since prospects want to know more about you and your team before they make their first appointment. 

That said, prospective patients will also want to know why you can help them. So, writing your about page can be a little tricky. It has to be about you but NOT about you. It must include what’s unique about your practice, education and experience that will specifically help patients with their problems.

Many times, it is best to have a professional writer interview you and write your bio because it is daunting to write about yourself. But you can also have team members write about each other. Go ahead, list your education, awards and links to articles you have written or interviews you have given—this gives you credibility. But plain CVs or resumes reproduced on a page are boring! Write your bio from the perspective of your prospective patient. (Now say that 5 times fast!)

Quick checklist of must-haves for your About page:

• An interesting and engaging bio for each member of your team
• A separate section for resume items like schools attended and degrees earned
• Be sure the information on this page answers the question, “What’s in it for me?” from your ideal patient’s perspective

Service Page Tips

Eventually, it’s a good idea to write a web page for each kind of service, product and program you provide. This allows you to go into detail about each, who it’s for, what to expect, etc.  This will also give you a chance to include keywords for each service (which improves your visibility online with search engines) and also appeal to the target audience for each service.  Don’t forget to include pages about new products or services when you launch them.

General must-haves for your Services content:

• Write a page for each service, product or program you offer.
• Put self-descriptive keywords in the URL of each service page, for SEO purposes—we’ll explain below.  (For example:  www.BestChiro.com/weight-loss-program)
• Always write with your ideal patient for each service in mind:  what’s important to her and why she should care!

Blog Tips

Publishing a blog communicates helpful information to your website visitors and positions you as an expert in your field. Publishing fresh content is also very good for the search engine optimization (SEO) of your website. Google and other search engines use many factors in their algorithms to decide which websites get displayed after someone searches with a few keywords. Publishing fresh content with common keywords helps make your website more relevant to searches and therefore more discoverable by search engines.

Two tips to improve the SEO of your website content:

• Start your blog article in your newsletter and continue it on your website, which increases traffic to your website and also helps with SEO. 
• Install Yoast on your website’s dashboard. Yoast is a free plug-in that provides a guide to placing keywords in strategic locations in order to improve SEO on each page of your site. Read a few articles on the Yoast blog to learn how to use the Yoast tool and improve your writing for search engine optimization. This includes learning how to use keywords most effectively.
• Use H1 tags for your main headline on each page and H2 and H3 tags on your subheadings.  If you learn about writing with keywords from the tip above, this concept will be covered!

We hope this article helps you focus on and improve your chiropractic practice’s website.  As always, feel free to reach out to us if you need more creative ideas for integrating your ChiroTV Network tools with your overall marketing strategies!