What Makes a Good Medical Website Good?
This article will help you understand how medical websites are unique and need extra measures and how to design and develop an excellent medical website.
A medical organisation's website is typically the first point of contact with potential patients. With that in mind, designing a site for a medical organisation should prioritise clarity and ease of use. If you're looking to build a website for your medical organisation, keep reading, as this article will give you valuable insights.
Why is it essential to have a professional website for a Medical practice?
If you are planning to start a medical practice or are already an owner, then you might already know the importance of choosing the right location for your practice.
Patients can be drawn to a medical centre by locating it near other health facilities, such as allied health professions, pathologists, pharmacies, or hospitals. It is also possible to gain new patients by starting a shop-front practice in a shopping centre, preferably near a pharmacy.
So visibility is a crucial factor in acquiring patients.
For the same reason, online visibility is also an important factor nowadays.
For example, if a new young family moves into your area, sooner or later, they will need medical assistance, and most likely, they will search online for their next family Doctor.
In this scenario, your practice needs to be in the search result.
Not only does your practice website need to be on the first page of the search result, but it should also outperform your competitor's website in terms of look and feel, Accessibility, user-friendliness and more.
You need a great website to acquire loyal and long-lasting clients.
So what makes a great medical website great? Keep reading…
Precise, error-free and helpful Information delivery.
A medical website must ensure that the information presented is relevant, free of error and helpful to the site visitor. Simply put, if patients can't understand the information you're providing on your site, there's a good chance they won't choose to visit your medical centre in the first place.
Therefore content for a medical website needs to be prepared by a professional who can ensure all the writing uses the correct terminology relevant to your healthcare organisation.
If you are looking to rapidly increase clients or promote a particular product or service, you might consider hiring a professional Marketing Copywriter. A copywriter can write compelling website copy to convert visitors into clients.
Having A Blog Section is a great way to provide helpful health-related information. Not only can you help people with healthcare information, but you can also build an audience and rank on search engines with a blog.
Accessibility & User Friendliness
Medical websites should comply with WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). Even though they are not required by law in Australia, it only makes sense being a health professional to express interest in being more inclusive.
From the outside looks, a website may appear user-friendly, but if not developed keeping best practices in mind, it can be pretty unfriendly inside. People with sight and other neurological disabilities may find your website difficult to use if not designed and developed correctly.
What group of people may find your website not user-friendly?
- Blind Users
- Vision Impaired Users
- People with ADHD
- Users who encounter Seizure
- People with cognitive disability
- People with motor impairment
Blind Users
Blind Users usually use applications like NVDA, VoiceOver, JAWS and Talkback to surf the internet. A medical website should be compatible with these applications to ensure blind users can access the website.
Vision Impaired Users
A simple design feature to tweak the sharpness and contrast can significantly improve visibility for most vision impairments like Glaucoma, Tunnel vision, Degrading Eyesight, Cataracts etc.
People with ADHD
Designing a website with less distraction, clutter, and easy-to-focus-on elements will help people with ADHD.
Users who encounter Seizure
To make a website Seizure safe, the designer should refrain from incorporating too much animation and moving objects. However, if the branding demands moving elements, then there should be an option to freeze all the moving things with a button press.
People with cognitive disability
Making essential elements more differentiable and Providing assistive technology can help people with Autism, Dyslexia and CVA.
A website that defines your Brand Identity
It's human psychology; we tend to feel more inclined towards great brands. Superior brand identity provides immediate confidence in the mind of a consumer.
Therefore your website should appropriately present your quality of service and a high standard.
A section where you can display your accreditation and doctor's profile can elevate your brand. If your practice is a bit old, you can display the number of patients, and the years you have served.
Fast & Secured
Healthcare websites must be fast and secure. Therefore, the website should be hosted on a high-speed secured CDN server.
A professionally developed website will load quickly, even with a 3G internet connection. A Fast website will ensure it is accessible in rural areas and will rank on google. So make sure your coding is clean and free from bugs.
Easy Navigation
When potential patients visit your site, you want them to easily access the information you're providing. While there is no one way to design a medical organisation's website, you should keep a few key things in mind when designing navigation.
- It should be easy to navigate.
- Critical pieces of information should be easily accessible.
- Include a Q and A section
- Choose a good appointment booking platform.
- Place practical call-to-action buttons.
This, in turn, will make it easier for potential patients to find exactly what they're searching for. There are a few ways to design a website for a medical organisation that allows for easy navigation.
Bottom line
When designing a medical organisation's website, you'll want to ensure that the information you provide is straightforward, easy to navigate, and includes accessibility features. The best way to do this is to ensure that you hire the right people to develop your medical website. Once they implement these best practices, you should be well on track to building a solid relationship with your customers.
