The way in which we search for and find our health care providers has changed in the past 10 years. We no longer rely on word-of-mouth, moving online for our search for quality health services. So, what determines an effective medical website design? In other words, how can a health care provider build trust through their website layout, design, and content?
Let’s go through examples of elements that make a medical website come across as professional, legitimate, and most importantly, trustworthy.
Importance Of Custom Website Design for Medical & Healthcare Providers
When you are seeking a healthcare provider, you expect the service and treatment to be customised to your needs. Your website should be custom-designed to reflect your services and overall feel to establish trust and authority. The team at Mink Media believe that you need to build credibility through effective web design so that users can see that your services are equally as professional and up to date.
Here are five must-have elements in an effective medical web design:
1. Clear And Multiple Call-To-Actions
Don’t make your visitors search for ways to get in contact with you! This is a sure way to lose the interest of or irritate a user, and they may look to your fellow providers instead. Make your practice easily contactable by having the following on your website:
- Clickable “book now” buttons
- Contact phone number and email that is large and visible
- Slide-out sticky “contact us” tab
- Web chat – A visitor may have questions and want fast and reliable answers. This is when a web chat is invaluable, allowing you to capture potential patient information, while you are providing helpful answers.
2. Visual Icons
Although this may not be everyone, most people tend to skim read and appreciate visual cues found on websites. This is why icons of service and brand logos are a great element to use on medical websites. For example, the screenshot below shows that this clinic offers or uses these services in an easy, visual format:
Now look at this website’s written listing of health fund providers:
What do you think is more user-friendly and easy to understand? The written list or the colourful icons? No doubt that it’s the latter.
3. Easy-To-Navigate Menu Structure
Have you ever visited a website where you can’t seem to find what you’re after? Isn’t that frustrating? Ensure that your site menu is simple, accessible, and makes it easy to browse through your site. This is also very important as part of SEO, as this is how Google’s “bots” crawl through your website to evaluate its helpfulness and relevance to determine where it should sit in search engine results.
4. Photography Of Your Practice & Team
Yes, it might be easier to use stock images on your website, but if you take the time to capture and use real images of your staff and practice, this helps to create a more authentic and trustworthy feel. Using photos of you and your staff allows visitors a ‘sneak peek’ into your practice, where they can familiarise themselves with who will be treating them, rather than viewing random photos of people who are not part of your team.
5. Last But Not Least… Content!
How useful is your website? The content on your website needs to communicate information about the services offered – a visitor doesn’t want to call you up every time they are looking for details! Have your website do the explaining for you. It also shows that you have relevant knowledge about the services you provide, helping to build trust and reliability. Quality content is very important from an SEO perspective as well!
One Package For All Your Web Development & Design Needs
Get all your medical website design and digital marketing needs under one roof! Mink Media offers custom web design and web development services to help you reach marketing and business goals. Our team are highly knowledgable in web development and web design for the health industry. We also offer hosting support, search engine optimisation, content strategy, and other digital marketing services that can get your website up to speed.
Mink Media are ready to help you with effective web design solutions for your medical website! Get started today on 0426 246 465 or send us an online message.
