Avoiding Dental Website Design Mistakes

Curious if your dental website is up-to-date with the latest web technologies and utilizing standard best practices? If your practice is utilizing a dental website template (or theme) that hasn’t been updated in the past couple of years, then your web presence may need a makeover. Website design and web viewing technology have changed pretty drastically as smartphones and tablets have evolved. It’s also possible that user experience data is more readily available today than it was a couple of years ago. Using UX data when designing, optimizing and maintaining your website is critical to success. So you may not even know that your website is old-fashioned. This is why we have put together a list of the 4 biggest dental website design mistakes that we see quite often, and why you need to fix them!

Mistake #1:

Not making a good 1st impression – Today’s society is all about instant gratification, 1st impressions, and quick engagements. Your website should be compelling and personal to your practice at first glance. This means that your website needs to load extremely fast on mobile and tablet devices (under 3 seconds is best). 40% of all visitors will most likely leave your website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load (Source). Not focusing on mobile first is another massive mistake, as Google has now stated that more searches are done on mobile than on desktop (Source). Also making sure that your website is personalized to your practice will ultimately lead to better conversion rates (or potential patients actually reaching out for an appointment). Potential patients are interested in your individual practice, not the stock photographs of no-name doctors.

Mistake #2:

Having a bad mobile experience – We mentioned a few statistics about mobile usage above, but you should make sure that your mobile website experience is air tight. More visitors will likely be viewing your website on their mobile and tablet devices, then they will be on their desktop. 48% of users say they are frustrated & annoyed when on sites that are poorly optimized for mobile (source). Also, 71% of publishers say well-formed mobile content boosts user engagement (source). At Elevate DDS we recommend going with responsive website design and creating awesome content across all platforms, rather than having a shortened mobile website.

Mistake #3:

Poor layouts and bad navigation – Disjointed navigation can be detrimental to your SEO efforts and bad for the end user experience. Deciding which pages should be included in the top menu is a critical step in the process. A hierarchy should be created for the most important pages, second most important and so on. 44% of all website users complained that website navigation was difficult. This ultimately hinders your UX and can cause visitors to leave your site completely and search for a competitor. Page layouts are also extremely important, as call-to-actions (CTA’s) should be clear and concise. Personal call-to-actions convert 42% better than basic CTA’s (source).

Mistake #4:

Not using enough video and blog posts – This is probably the best thing you can do to create more buzz for your business. However, very few dentists are actually taking advantage of quality video and blogging resources. Statistics show that 73% of people say that video has helped persuade them to buy a product or service (source). 70% of consumer learn about a company through their blog rather than an ad. And 60% of consumers feel positive about a company after reading its blog (source).

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