Fix These 5 Common Healthcare Website Mistakes Before Someone Notices

If you were pitching your company to a potential B2B buyer, consumer (patient), investor, or other stakeholder, would you feel confident that you could do the job well if you could only use the company website?

You should be able to.

In today's business environment, your healthcare website design should be able to communicate your brand value proposition and effectively communicate the benefits and unique differentiation of your product(s) or service(s). If your website cannot serve this need, your business is leaving a great deal of opportunity on the table.

With healthcare companies under increasing pressure to do more with less, you would be crazy not to put effort into a strong healthcare website that can effectively communicate for your company 24/7 365 days a year, doesn't need meal breaks, and can work without supervision or management. Not only can a website communicate for you, but it can also answer questions, provide important product information, and generate new leads to conversion.

A healthcare website is an extremely valuable business asset that must be maintained. A website update can be done when you are expanding your business offering, changing direction, wanting to collect new leads (see a medical device marketing example that resulted in 2,300+ leads captured after the launch of a website redesign), building brand equity, or simply staying up-to-date with the current business standard.

There's nothing wrong with needing to update your healthcare website. All companies need to continuously evaluate whether or not their healthcare website is adequately serving business needs. Your website is an important part of your brand identity, and often times the first point of interaction for new customers, partners, suppliers, and other stakeholders.

Here are 5 common healthcare website mistakes:

1. The homepage of your healthcare website does not communicate your brand.

Not using this opportunity for branding? You're losing out. Your digital identity is a valuable company asset that you should be maximizing the value of.

• Is your logo prominent? (What's your logo look like? Read 4 Steps to Expect from a Logo Design Process)
• Are you using the brand's color scheme?
• Are you using a consistent font for the brand?
• Does the website reflect your company's "look and feel?"

2. Your website isn't optimized for viewing on a mobile device or tablet.

Roughly 1/3 of patients use tablets or mobile devices on a daily basis for research and/or to book appointments (Google Think).

• Is your healthcare website difficult to navigate on a mobile device or tablet?
• Do all of your website's features work correctly on a mobile device or tablet?
• Does your website require lots of zooming and scrolling when viewed on a mobile device or tablet?

3. You have non-working buttons and links.

This is problematic for a variety of reasons:

• You're potentially frustrating users with a poor User Experience (UX) design.
• It looks like you don't care about your digital presence.
• It looks like your incapable of keeping up a basic level of digital technology consumers now expect from companies.

Ask yourself these questions:

• When was the last time you tested your company website to make sure everything was working?
• Do you have a system in place for detecting problems, such as broken links and 404 errors?

You might want to read this article: Medical Marketing in the Digital Age: Does your company look healthy online?

4. Your imagery is abysmal.

• Do you have broken images on your healthcare website? This does not reflect well on your company, plus it's a missed opportunity.
• Are you using awkward or ugly stock photography? If you're guilty of using stock photos from the 1980s we won't tell anyone, but it's time to give them up.
• Are your images of poor quality? Amateur photography is not acceptable for professional web design. It reflects poorly on your company and your product(s) and/or service(s).
• Do your images communicate anything meaningful? Images are valuable digital real estate that can play an important role in marketing communications. Don't waste any space with pointless or random imagery.
• Have you ever thought, "What the heck am I looking at?" Make sure you don't have any confusing or unexplained graphics.

5. Your website takes forever to load.

• How long does it take for your healthcare website to load? People have extremely limited patience. A KISSmetrics survey found that most people would wait 6-10 seconds before they abandon a page. What's more, 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less.

If you're concerned your website is outdated or not maximizing potential opportunities, the ParkerWhite team would be happy to discuss your current website and potential opportunities to improve your website to get more value from it.