Creating and maintaining a website can be easy. Creating and maintaining a website that converts can be hard if you don’t know what to look for to improve!
The typical conversion rate for a website depends on your industry and should always stay within the average range. For the healthcare industry your website should have a conversion rate of 2-4%. If your results are not within the average range for your industry, you may want to take a closer look at your website. The function, user experience, content, and design may be to blame if you are falling behind. There are many important aspects of your website that you can review to understand why your conversion rate is low and how to improve it!
Find out how you can offer your users a better impression of your practice and your services with our 5 ways to increase your medical practice website conversion rate below!
What is a Website Conversion Rate?
Before diving into 5 ways to increase your website conversion rate, you first need to understand what a website conversion rate is and why you should care.
The conversion rate of a website is the percentage of users who take the action that is desired by the business. The desired action can be a variety of things such as signing up for the monthly newsletter or clicking on your practice’s contact information and scheduling an appointment!
The rate of conversion that your website offers your business, helps give you insights on how well your website is helping your business thrive. It is important to learn how your website assists your practice in finding and retaining more patients. If you have a lower than average conversion rate, most website visitors are leaving without taking the desired action.
If you want to increase your website conversion rate to increase your ROI, read below to see how you can encourage your website visitors to take action. There are a number of factors that can influence your dental website's conversion rate which will be discussed below!
5 Proven Ways to Increase Your Website Conversion Rate
1. Ensure Navigation is Easy
Having a user-friendly website is the most important part of optimizing your website’s performance. A positive user experience with your website increases the chance of conversion. Imagine a person is browsing the internet for a local dentist in their area and they find our website! This is great news, but when they click on your homepage will they be able to easily navigate all the information on your website? Where are your services? Are the buttons on all the tabs readable? These are all factors that impact the navigation of your website.
Navigation is very important for a website, if nobody knows how to use it, your website loses all of its benefits for your business. If there is no main navigation and the text on your website is difficult to read, your website visitors are very likely to click away and locate another practice in their area with an easier to navigate website. Frustration is an emotion you should avoid giving potential patients when they are browsing your website and services. Fixing your website’s navigation is one way to create a user-friendly website.
Depending on your website you may want to use a search bar and a main navigation menu. You should also ensure that the text on your website is clear and avoids confusion. Your navigation should be exactly where website visitors expect it. For example, the main menu should be located at the top of the page or on the side of the screen.
It is crucial to understand what your website users will be wondering to understand what they need! You as a business owner understand your industry well, utilize that knowledge to create a website with easy navigation. It is also important to have a UX expert audit or redesign your website can fix most navigation issues as they have a deep understanding of every website users needs.
2. Ensure Your Design is Responsive
If someone is browsing your website on a phone, can they easily find information on the location of your practice? Does your menu shrink but still have text large enough to read on a hand held screen? Smartphones that access the internet are very common now. This means that a significant portion of your website visitors are likely coming from mobile searches. Losing out on a significant amount of searches decreases your conversion rate. This is why the design of your website is so important and you should always consider responsiveness in your website design!
Ensuring that your website is responsive to all devices is a great way to increase visitation to your website and up your conversion rate. Unresponsive websites often require more scrolling and zooming to understand what is going on and how to navigate these websites. This will cause frustration and prompt users on mobile and tablet devices to leave your website in search for another website that works with their device.
This is another feature that increases conversion in which UX experts can assist in! A responsive design is a modern website approach that offers the ability for websites to display properly on all devices by adapting automatically to every sized screen! Responsive design works by having your website developer adapt your website’s content and features on different devices. They will use CSS to adjust properties on your website so you don’t have to worry about losing out on patients.
3. Optimize Your Content
Your website is usually a visitor's first impression to your business, so say what’s important! Content gives you the opportunity to promote your practice and its services as well as establish your professionalism and knowledge. Your content should add to your website’s user friendliness, follow your brand voice, be clear, consistent, and error free. Answer the questions you would have about your business including the services that you provide, what your policy is for insurance, and who your specialists are! This will create trust and encourage your visitors to engage more in your website and your business.
When creating content for your website, it is important to break up text and enough to allow your user the space to absorb information. Avoid large walls of text with no images or sectioning! Your visitors usually do not want to read overwhelming amounts of text when browsing a website. The less text, the better, as long as it does not leave out any important information.
One great way to optimize content for the purpose of conversion is to use copywriting! Copywriters are individuals who are trained to connect with your target audience and convert to increase your revenue. This persuasive writing words that inspire and motivate people to take specific actions and create conversions.
4. Use Call-To-Actions
Call-to-actions, also known as CTA’s, are a tool for marketing that encourages a specific response or action. The completion of this action can be considered a conversion. The purpose of your CTA to complete the specific action can be a variety of things. You can prompt people to sign up for your newsletter, fill out new patient forms, and schedule an appointment. These actions should be prompted in short phrases, no longer than five words. Action words like Sign-up and Schedule Now tell the reader what to do. These actions need to be clearly visible and stand out. They can be on brightly colored buttons and bars and bring attention to themselves.
This may seem like a simple way to offer you an increased conversion rate, and it is! You need to encourage users to perform your desired action. Generate intrigue and curiosity with a brightly colored button and a good action word and increase your click through rate!
5. Include Testimonials and Social Proof
Testimonials from customers are a very powerful tool in conversion. Whether you are a dentist, doctor, or any business owner, testimonials are an incredibly important part of your website. In healthcare, word of mouth referrals were the best way to capture new patients! You can offer website visitors the same comfort in trusting your practice through customer testimonials on your website. Keep in mind that patients are trusting you not with a purchase of a physical product but their health, their smiles, and sometimes even their lives. Customer testimonials not only convince potential patients to continue to explore your services online, but offer an opportunity for you to ease their anxieties. They are also the most persuasive tool that you can use as social proof.
Social proof is a psychological phenomenon that is based on the idea that humans follow similar actions and opinions if they believe that they are mimicking correct behavior. Uncertainty is often the biggest deterrent to a purchase or an action, you can eliminate uncertainty by showing successfully happy customers and testimonials. This phenomenon also includes badges and awards if your practice or your specialists have acquired any.
Conclusion
Optimizing your website through strategic design and marketing is the best way to increase your RIO! Use these tips and you are sure to increase your medical practice’s website conversion rates! If you are in need of a free website audit to understand where your website can be improved, meet with our trusted team of UX/UI, SEO, and marketing experts!
Source: Google
