When developing a new website, many healthcare companies believe it’s necessary to include as much information as possible to stand out from their competitors. The key to a successful website, however, is to make the experience easy and intuitive for your customers to use. For the medical industry specifically, there are a few common healthcare website design mistakes that can be the difference between gaining a new client or losing it to a competitor.
In this blog, we’re looking at 5 common issues we see on healthcare websites and providing simple guidelines to help you design and maintain your site successfully.
1. Information Overload
Like most businesses in the healthcare industry, you’ve probably got a lot to say. That’s great, but don’t overload your readers. Rather than trying to fit every piece of information onto your homepage, keep it relatively light on content and more focused on the mood it conveys when a visitor arrives at your site.
Give visitors an overview of your main products and services. Use engaging callouts that address the everyday needs of your visitors. Use appropriate, eye-catching images with clean fonts and descriptive text to hold readers’ attention and guide them throughout your site.
If your healthcare website transmits protected health information (PHI), which includes personally identifiable medical or payment information related to health services, you’ll want to ensure your healthcare website complies with HIPAA regulations.
2. Disorganized Pages
As with any industry, healthcare websites should have simple and clear navigation menus that are consistent throughout, making it easy for visitors to find all your products and services, as well as any methods of communication you offer, such as a phone number, email, contact form, and physical address.
Taking the time to organize content properly can mean the difference between a fantastic site and one that is virtually unusable. Design your navigation to speak to your target audiences and draw them directly to relevant information through top-level dropdowns and subpages. Cluttering up your site with too many pages can distract from your primary call-to-action.
In addition to beautiful designs and seamless organization, your site should utilize responsive page design to ensure that the same look and feel carries over to every size monitor, screen, and device. Whether someone is browsing on a 70-inch television or their phone, the site will be equally recognizable and navigable.
3. Low-Quality Resources
Having concise information on your healthcare website can be fine for first-time visitors; however, it’s essential that your existing clients also have reasons to come back. Valuable resources such as a patient portal, online bill payments, appointment scheduling, or a newsletter sign-up form can add value to your healthcare website and your business.
Depending on your niche in the healthcare industry, it might be appropriate to produce additional content such as equipment guides, case studies, whitepapers, and eBooks. High-quality, fresh, original, freely distributed resources are fantastic for driving traffic and helping to establish your company as an industry leader. They can do wonders for promoting organic word-of-mouth growth as well.
4. Inconsistent Content
The homepage and subpage designs of your healthcare website should be consistent. The combination of fonts, colors, and graphic elements should make sense throughout the site, and deliver a cohesive brand message and identity to your healthcare website
There should never be any confusion about the topic of each page throughout your site. Ensure your content creation team agrees on company preferences, such as how the business name should appear in writing. Consistent content shows that you’re professional and organized and provides a better user experience. Along with the copy, visual elements such as colors, tone of photography, and iconography should be consistent throughout.
5. Poor Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing a website or a webpage to gain rankings on a search engine’s “natural” or un-paid search results. It’s crucial for an online marketing specialist or web developer to optimize your site with keywords to remain visible to your existing and potential patients.
Make sure your meta titles and descriptions are unique and accurate to their corresponding pages. The meta content of a webpage is the information that shows up in search results, so it’s vital that your page titles are clear, and your page descriptions make their point within current recommended character counts.
Within your healthcare website copy, be sure to include long-tail keywords, which are brief, descriptive phrases that give search engines better chances of showing your site to potential customers.
For example, imagine a janitorial business that specifically services medical facilities. Simple keywords such as “hospital,” “janitor,” and “cleaning” are appropriate, but not necessarily effective. Combinations of words, such as “24-hour hospital cleaning,” “medical janitorial contractor,” and “emergency medical cleaner,” have more terms to connect with natural search queries and are more likely to drive traffic to your healthcare website.
Wrapping Up
Whether you’re planning a new website or are interested in updating your current one, download this free handbook to help start your healthcare website building journey. It covers everything you need to know about SEO, SEM, and more—including easy explanations for the digital terminology you’ll need to know to move forward with confidence. Download it today and keep it as a handy, informative resource for yourself and your team.
