Web Site Design for the Refractive Practice

Especially during an economic downturn, Internet marketing is a worthwhile investment.

BY JONATHAN FASHBAUGH

The current economic decline and recent sharp decrease in refractive procedure volumes have forced practices across the country to scrutinize their budgets. The number of potential patients is down, as is the amount of money in the average practice's marketing budget. In trying to make ends meet, some practices make the mistake of looking at their marketing as fat that can be trimmed from their budget.

I won't say that you need to do the exact opposite. Every marketer out there is saying that you have to market more in such a dismal economy. While it sounds like a scheme to sell more marketing services, I do think they have a point. By cutting marketing altogether, you guarantee a drop in procedure volume because your practice isn't even being considered by some potential patients. Practices should take a close look at their marketing to see what is working and what isn't. But instead of completely cutting marketing, choose less expensive forms of advertising that promise to yield a better return for less money. Internet marketing is proving to be fairly recession-proof. The Internet metrics group, Hitwise, reported that the number of online users who were searching for health and medical services was up 46% in April 2008 from April 2007.

Compared with other media, Web site marketing is one of the cheapest, most effective methods of marketing to new patients — if it is done correctly. But even Internet marketing can fail if you don't focus on converting traffic into patients. It all begins with your practice Web site. Here is some advice on how to make yours deliver.

Begin With Content

Most refractive practices have a Web site of some sort by now, but a large percentage of these sites are too old to be effective. Their outdated design actually reflects poorly on the practice. The first step to seeing a Web site become a contributing part of the practice is to complete a site makeover. This may mean scrapping everything and starting over, or perhaps salvaging some of the content and creating a new look and feel. In either case, it is important to consider the content of the Web site before spending considerable time on what it will look like.

Content is the most important part of your Web site. It must have real substance in order to attract the attention of the search engines and to be regarded as a credible source of information by would-be patients. The patients won't even see your Web site if they can't find it on the search engines, so let's take a closer look at how the search engines evaluate content.

Attracting Search Engines

Search engines are looking for information resources to deliver to their users. Their business model revolves around the ability to highlight quality Web sites, thus trying to make their search engine more useful than others. When you understand this, promoting your Web site is simple: Give the search engines what they want.

The text of your Web site must go beyond simply listing the procedures you provide. Offer in-depth information on each of your procedures. Include multiple pages on procedures such as LASIK. Write helpful pages such as, "Are You A Candidate?" and "Frequently Asked Questions." By giving the search engines more pages of your site to index, you increase the odds of showing up for the various searches that people will do when seeking a refractive surgeon.

Be sure that the text you add to your Web site is unique. Pulling content from another site (even if you have permission) will draw a penalty from search engines. The penalty will likely prevent your Web site from showing up on the first page of the search engine results. (Google imposes this penalty because they feel that duplicate Web sites in their results will decrease the usefulness of their search engine.)

Appealing to Visitors

Now that we understand why content is important to the search engines, what about people? Do people even read Web sites? People considering refractive surgery do. There's a reason why they haven't had LASIK yet. Many were waiting for the procedure to prove itself as safe. Others were waiting for the procedure to become less expensive.

Whatever the reason, only now are they actively researching the procedure. The demographics for potential LASIK patients are so wide-ranging that you can't assume anything about the way people will behave on your site, except that they will read some portion of it. People are hungry for information about which vision correction procedure suits them best and they have questions about those procedures.

If visitors feel that your Web site was helpful in answering these questions, they will be more likely to contact you. However, if they can't find good information on your site, they will click the "back" button in search of a more informative and therefore more credible Web site.

Your pages don't have to be painfully long-winded. In fact, it's better to layer your content with more interlinking pages that are shorter so that visitors can quickly find the information that they are looking for. Long pages are daunting and hard to read. Shorter pages are easier to scan and, again, multiple pages give you more opportunities on the search engines.

Invite visitors to print your Web site's pages. Create destination pages that are useful, such as "Questions to Ask When Shopping for a LASIK Surgeon." Include a "Print This Page" button and make sure that your Web site is coded to format printed pages neatly with your branding and contact information attached. This will arm the potential patient with a useful tool that has your name on it. They will be more likely to contact you after their research because you helped them narrow their choices.

Add a Blog and Videos

You can also foster credibility by building a relationship with your Web site's visitors. By including elements like video and a blog, you can reveal more about who the doctor is and how friendly the practice is.

People do business with people they like, so a good video should showcase the doctor as a likeable human being. The video should not be a commercial. Instead, make it a conversational piece in an interview format. If you offer educational seminars, consider recording one on video and editing it into digestible segments. You don't want your videos to run longer than 2 or 3 minutes. People are generally in too big of a hurry to watch anything that is too lengthy. Visitors who have the time will be willing to click on multiple videos and actually be more likely to watch more video footage than if you offer one long video — just as is the case with short, multiple pages of content.

Blogs can build relationships and rapport with visitors by providing a window into the mind of the doctor/practice. A blog is a serial section of your Web site that allows you to post material without the aid of a Web designer, so you can add material at your own convenience. And blogging is easy. If you are computer savvy enough to send an e-mail, you will be able to master blogging.

Blogs should be filled with answers to frequently asked questions, developments in vision correction procedures and "news" items regarding the practice. Essentially, anything that is interesting to you as a refractive surgeon or practice administrator will make for a good blog entry. When Web site visitors read these blog entries, they get a sense of who you are and what is important to you.

In the end, the idea behind including videos and blogs is to make visitors feel as though they already know someone in the practice. This will help them to feel more comfortable about contacting you. You can identify a contact person on your Web site by labeling your contact forms with a heading such as "Just Ask Pam." This call-to-action invites the visitor to connect with a specific person in your practice and assures him that his e-mail isn't going into an anonymous electronic void.

Finding the Right Designer

This brings us back to Web site design. The most difficult part is finding the right designer for the job. Don't make the mistake of shopping for Web site design based solely on price. Look at the designer's creations and the company as a whole and make sure that they have:

► good, original content. Ask who writes the content—you or the design company?
► a good search engine positioning track record
► video for the web
► blogs
► competitive designs that focus on converting visitors into patients.

Don't waste time developing a Web site that is a piece of online art. It is a marketing piece, plain and simple. Sure, it needs to look good, but it also needs to convert visitors into leads.

Having said that, avoid a cluttered Web site design. Some calls-to-action just aren't worth taking away attention from the most desired action that we want the visitor to take — booking a consultation. Ophthalmic Web sites are notorious for adding too many calls-to-action. You have to make the difficult decision about whether you want to add one more piece of clutter in order to offer a link to order contact lenses online, for instance. The contact lens button could live exclusively on your optical page, thereby keeping the rest of your Web site tidy. The KISS (Keep it simple, stupid) rule definitely applies here. Keep your design clean and to the point.

Well Worth the Effort

A good Web site that is well positioned on the search engines can bring in new patients even in the toughest economic times. It is one of the best investments that your practice can make. OM

Jonathan Fashbaugh serves as an Internet marketing consultant for Page 1 Solutions, LLC, a dental/medical/legal Internet marketing firm specializing in strategic Web site design, search engine optimization/positioning and online sales strategies. Contact him at 800-916-3886 ext. 1210, or via e-mail at jonathanf@page1solutions.com.