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Here are some keys to building a successful website.
By Harry Goldsmith, DPM & Jon A. Hultman, DPM, MBA
“With over 180 million people in just the United States and Canada having access to the Internet and websites springing up at the rate of several per minute, the Internet has become a strategic tool for successfully growing a business.”
paraphrased from Webonomics (Evan I. Schwartz)
Make no mistake about it, the Internet is not going away. In a very short period of time, it has so firmly established itself into our very fabric that many of us cannot recall a time when it was not around. The Internet has radically changed the way we do business. People DO buy things on the Web: books, office supplies, clothes, software, airline tickets, antiques, anything. They do this because it is easy; it is convenient; it is often even a cheaper place to shop. People DO surf the Internet because information, never so readily available, is now just a click away: the online version of The New York Times or The Washington Post; a virtual tour of the Museo del Prado or the Musee du Louvre; Google or MySimon; and on and on. People DO search the Internet for information regarding health-related issues, diseases and medical conditions, and, yes, they will seek out physician websites to learn something about specific doctors and their areas of specialty.
The number of physicians and medical groups having practice websites is growing exponentially. Why do you suppose that is? While originally it may have been the novelty of being the “first on the block,” more and more physicians have begun to see value behind the novelty. It is the value behind the novelty that this article will explore.
Building the Virtual Office
Evan I. Schwartz, in Webonomics, states that, “…no matter what any given website specializes in, this principle will always hold true: The quantity of people visiting is far less important than the quality of their experience.” No truer words were ever written on the subject. How does one create a quality experience for patients and potential patients visiting your practice website? Actually, it is not that difficult to do. Schwartz continues by saying, “The name of the game for any [website]is to find a unique niche, then use the interactive features of the Web to cater to a very specific and loyal group of individuals.”
A medical practice website should instantly appear to be of “value” to your patients and potential future patients through its ability to extend your practice, in terms of information and function, over the Internet.
First Impressions
There is no doubt that your website’s appearance will reflect directly upon you and your practice. Because you want visitors to feel a desire to explore your site, it must somehow “grab” them in overall layout, colors, graphics (photos), content, and be easy to navigate. As doctors, we would like to believe that consumers will evaluate our sites based on content; however, a recent study by WebWatch (led by Stanford University’s Persuasive Technology Lab) found that consumers with no medical training tend to judge the content credibility of medical websites based on visual design. This includes such things as layout, font size, color, and ease of use, all things which tend to make a site appear more professional.
Layout
Think logically. What are visitors expecting to see first, and how would you like to guide them through the pages of your website? Keep in mind, the “quality of their experience.”
There should be a sense of order to the website. The first page most visitors see is the “home” page which includes general information about the practice, the physicians, and their specialties. This “home” page (sometimes labeled, “About Our Practice”) should be designed to virtually “connect” visitors to the practice. The page content should express a sense of professionalism and commitment to quality care. Since the “home” page is generally the starting point for a tour of your practice website, it must be able to tempt visitors to go beyond it to targeted areas of the website. This takes mere website design to a website strategy level.
Site Features
Medical websites offer visitors, patients and potential patients the opportunity to get to know your practice upfront and close. Any and all pertinent information regarding your practice should be posted on the pages of your website. Expanded information may include:
• a practice mission statement
• practice policies and information (e.g., hours of business; for emergencies, call…; if you need to cancel your appointment, please…; etc.)
• physician biographies, areas of specialty, and areas of interest
• introduction of the key staff, their jobs, and methods of contacting them, if necessary
• information regarding your specialty
• information on each office location
• medical information on conditions and diseases commonly seen and treated by the practice
• announcements of new treatments, techniques or innovations performed by the physicians in the practice
• testimonials
• an online newsletter for patients and visitors to the site
• copies of articles written by the physicians either specifically for the website or published in the literature
• a list of any upcoming talks members of the practice may be giving in the community, or any lectures the physicians may be giving to professional groups
• Internet links to other medical sites selected by the physicians for their patients and visitors.
A practice website affords an excellent opportunity to improve the efficiency of practice management by incorporating:
• interactive maps and driving directions for each of the office locations
• online tentative patient appointment requests
• online requests by patients for prescription refills (secure connection)
• demographic (data entry) forms that can either be filled out online (secure connection) or downloaded to be printed and filled out prior to appointments
• a “Contact Us” e-mail service to allow questions, correspondence and feedback by patients and visitors to the site (secure connection).
A practice website may, depending on the design and hosting capabilities, allow for an online store to retail medical supplies and products to patients and visitors. As such, the website potentially may develop a new source of income for the practice: retail sales.
Add-on Features The add-on feature capabilities of a medical practice website seem to expand every day, every week, every month. At the very least, it passively affords the practice the greatest advertising medium every devised – and at a cost significantly less than advertising in phone books, newspapers, radio or television. An online website never sleeps; it is open to provide information and limited service to all that visit on a 24 hour, 365 day basis.
How Do I Get Started?
Because your website is a reflection of your practice, it should be unique in design and style. While this does not mean that pre-designed website templates cannot be used, it does mean that your content – the information, photos, and features you include - must define you and your practice. While some practices build their websites “in-house” – maybe one of the doctors has an affinity for website design and development, or one of the staff’s 15 year old daughters is a wiz at website design having created one for her rock group – there are a plethora of companies which will provide you packages ranging from offering you minimal assistance to completely designing, developing, hosting and maintaining your site for you. It is only a matter of time and money.
If you are looking to an outside company to create your site, references, reputation, and availability of example sites are critical prior to your commitment. Generally, development of medical practice websites fall into 3 categories:
1) Templated sites with various ready-made styles to choose from (least expensive; generally limited in features; relatively quickly available)
2) Customized templated sites (more expensive with either an hourly or feature-by-feature upgrade cost for development, maintaining and hosting)
3) Custom websites (most expensive; subject to hourly design and development costs, or complete project costs; dependent on the features desired.
Depending on the company and their line of website products, templated websites do represent a reasonable choice for most practices. Consider what the website design and development packages include. Look for:
• quality, professional appearing, editable (self and custom) template site styles
• the ability to customize template sites at market rates without jumping into a totally custom site
• the availability of “multiple pages” to link to your home page
• the ability to include directions/maps, forms, multiple doctor information, e-mail mail communication, etc.
• a fixed monthly or annual cost which includes the template site, account set-up, domain name registration (or transfer of your existing domain name), hosting; basic search engine registration; and basic website statistical access;
• a company that has the capabilities (support, expandable web hosting space, etc.) to meet your ongoing needs
• see what other value-added features the template website has or may have in the future, when making your decision.
Consider a custom website when the templated- or customized templated-websites do not meet your current or future needs. Keep in mind that because many of the design and development pieces in a custom website are “ala carte” you must be sure to get, in writing, a list of specific costs. Request a time frame from initial development to online operation, and check to see what ongoing maintenance costs will be.
Patient Satisfaction
One lesson learned from the failure of early dot.com companies was that trust is essential. Consumers want to obtain information from a source they trust. Ideally, they want to get medical information from their own doctor or from a nationally credible source such as the Mayo Clinic or the National Institutes of Health. This “trust” factor opens numerous internal marketing opportunities with existing patients and referral sources. A patient who accesses your web page learns more about who you are and what you do. An adage in podiatric medicine is that “like refers like.” This creates an opportunity for a patient who was treated by you for one condition to learn the wide range of conditions and patient types that you treat.
Patient satisfaction is a major consideration for having a website. Satisfied patients stay with a practice and refer their friends and co-workers. Patients place great value on convenience. The top four drivers of patient satisfaction are: 1) the ability to gain access to a practice quickly, 2) A short waiting time after arriving at the practice, 3) a courteous staff, and 4) a doctor with good listening and explaining skills (much of which has to do with patients’ need for information about their condition). A well-designed web page can greatly leverage a doctor’s ability to improve in these top four areas. When entering a web page, patients are never put on hold, and with a state of the art appointment book, appointments can be made on line. Submitting data on-line will shorten their wait after arrival, and they can obtain vast amounts of information about their conditions on a web page or be linked with sources that the doctor trusts. Imagine, having the ability to target so many areas of patient satisfaction without requiring any of a doctor’s productive patient care time. Given the significant strategic marketing and operational efficiency advantages gained through a website, there is no bigger benefit relative to the cost possible through any other mechanism.
Welcome to Tomorrow
The worldwide growth of medical practice websites is phenomenal. While some practices are just “keeping up with the Joneses”, others have truly come to appreciate the value a website can bring to a practice: increasing efficiencies, serving as a repository of medical information for patients and visitors, providing a means of communication between patient and the physician(s), offering an inexpensive means of marketing the practice and the physician(s), and adding a potential source of new revenue in the form of retail sales. It is not a question of “if”, but “when” you will supplement your existing office with the virtual office. And there is no better time than now to begin investigating what a practice website can do for you. •
Harry Goldsmith, DPM is the CEO of Codingline, a reimbursement and practice management Internet and consulting company, as well as director of Podiatric Medical Review Consultants, a third party insurer consulting firm. Dr. Goldsmith’s main area of interest is reimbursement and practice management. He works with physicians and medical groups, as well as third party payers on issues related to billing, coding, reimbursement, medical review, quality assurance, medical-legal issues, and compliance. Dr. Goldsmith can be contacted at hgoldsmith@codingline.com.
Jon A. Hultman, DPM, MBA is a principal with Integrated Physicians Systems, a consulting company specializing in services focused on improving practice performance. Dr. Hultman can be contacted at jhfca@gte.net.
Officite
Podiatry Websites: A Professional Office Needs a Professional Web Presence.
You bank online. You buy airline tickets online. You know how convenient the Internet makes your life. Informed patients know this too and are turning to the Web first.
“A good medical practice Web site gives current and prospective patients the information and confidence they need to choose you.” That’s the assessment of Glenn Lombardi, President of Officite, an Internet marketing company for medical practices.
“With nearly 200 million Americans regularly using the Internet, the Web is a business necessity -- more than a Yellow Pages ad. It brings new patients to the practice. But medical practitioners’ Web sites can be so much more than just advertising,” he says.
The Web is a place where patients turn to do research, according to Julie Eppers Salvin, Executive Vice President of Signal Bridge, a communications consulting firm. “A good site offers usable information for patients,” she says. “They want answers, and they want to ensure that the doctor they contact is the best one for their particular ailment.” A good podiatry-practice site will offer substantive insight into common problems while showcasing how the practice’s doctors are experts.
“Patients seeking a podiatrist on the Internet choose a new practice based on a well-designed, useful and informative site,” Lombardi says. His organization, Officite, specializes in creating customized Web sites for podiatry practices. “We provide podiatry-specific content written by a medical copywriter and reviewed by an editorial board comprised of podiatrists – the site offers over 300 pages of text, animated imagery, photos, facts and more. And then, we work with the individual practice to customize the site with each doctor’s bio, specialties, office information, directions and on-line appointment request.
Building a sound Web site is only half of the process. The other critical component is enabling your site to be found by the major search engines. To optimize the presence of a site and direct patients to it, Officite indexes the sites it builds with the top 25 search engines. “Nearly 80 percent of all Web users get where they’re going via a search engine. Only by being proactive can you ensure that your site will be among the first they find,” Lombardi says.
“Doctors aren’t by nature marketers,” says Eppers Salvin. “Hire a professional who is an expert in your field. There is a lot to know about developing and maintaining a Web site, including writing and maintaining all of the content -- do it well or don’t do it at all.
“And remember that sites do much more than just attract clients,” Lombardi says. “Good Web sites keep current clients coming back. Your site should offer information that enhances a current patient’s experience. Having an eye-appealing site with substantive content is a major way to differentiate your practice in your area.”
To gain a clearer picture of what a content-rich podiatry site can do for them, Lombardi suggests doctors and practice managers visit his company’s demo at www.officite.com.