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How to Create the Perfect Dentistry Website

How to Create the Perfect Dentistry Website

by | Sep 15, 2021 | Dental Marketing, Google, Web Design

Over 38% of people judge a business based on how their website looks at first glance. Another 38% stop interacting with poorly designed websites. If your dentistry website doesn’t wow potential patients, they might leave.

As people continue leaving your website, your search engine rankings will drop. You might struggle to reach patients in the future as a result.

Don’t let it come to that! Instead, read on to discover the nine essentials you need to consider for your new dental website. After reading this guide, you can create the perfect dental site with your target audience in mind.

Then, you can generate more dental leads, book more appointments, and boost business.

Set your dental practice up for success. Improve your website with these nine tips today.

1. Establish Your Goals

Before you start designing and developing your dental website, take a moment to consider your short- and long-term goals. Otherwise, your dental site won’t align with your business and marketing objectives.

For example, maybe you want to:

  • Establish your credibility in the industry
  • Post more articles and unique content
  • Share before and after photos
  • Educate people about your services
  • Share patient reviews
  • Generate brand awareness
  • Improve search engine rankings
  • Book more appointments online

Establishing your goals will determine what elements you need to include on your website.

For example, let’s say you want to book more appointments through your dental site. Consider adding more than one conversion opportunity. You can add an online booking system, too.

If you want to establish your credibility, use blog posts and patient reviews.

Once you establish your goals, you can start creating your dental website.

2. Maintain Brand Consistency

As you start working on your dentistry website, make sure to consider your brand.

A distinct brand will help you stand out from other dentists in the area. Patients will start to recognize your brand on sight. You can generate brand awareness and recognition on different marketing channels.

Without brand consistency, however, you could confuse patients. They might confuse you with another dentist. Meanwhile, they won’t connect your marketing materials on different channels.

You could struggle to create an omnichannel marketing strategy if that’s the case.

You can maintain brand consistency by creating and following brand guidelines. These guidelines should include your:

  • Logo
  • Imagery styles
  • Vision statement
  • Mission statement
  • Brand voice and tone
  • Brand personality
  • Color palette
  • Font styles

Once you establish your brand guidelines, make sure your branding is consistent across every page of your site. Otherwise, someone might click from one page to the next and think they’re on a different dental site. 

3. Improve the User Experience

As you begin working on your dentist site, make sure to keep the user experience (UX) in mind.

A positive user experience will encourage visitors to explore your content. They’ll click around, increasing your dwell times and clickthrough rate. Your search engine rankings could rise as a result.

Higher search engine rankings will help you generate more brand awareness. Your dental site will appear before others in a search, too. You could boost your brand credibility as a result.

You can improve the UX on your site by:

  • Using short sentences and paragraphs
  • Organizing content in headings and subheadings
  • Improving page load times
  • Getting mobile optimized
  • Adding an SSL certificate for security

Run your website through Google’s PageSpeed Insights and Mobile-Friendly Test. Make sure your site is fast and easy to use on smaller screens.

4. Start Blogging

Remember, adding a blog to your website can boost your credibility. You can demonstrate your experience and expertise to boost brand trust. Blogging could improve your search engine rankings, too.

Add a blog to your dental website and start creating fresh content on a schedule.

5. Get Mobile-Optimized

Mobile optimization will ensure you don’t neglect part of your target audience.

In fact, mobile devices account for nearly 70% of all internet traffic. About 90% of people use multiple screens sequentially, too. Nearly 70% of companies that develop a mobile-first website see a rise in sales.

If your website isn’t optimized for smaller devices, people might leave.

6. Use SEO

Once you start blogging, optimize your website for search engine optimization (SEO). SEO can boost your search engine rankings. You can appear in front of more people who are looking for a local dentist.

Your search engine rankings can improve as you start blogging.

Consider working with an experienced digital marketing agency that offers SEO services. They can help you boost your rankings and generate more traffic. 

7. Add Conversion Opportunities

Make sure to add more than one conversion opportunity on your website. For example, you can use a form, allowing visitors to ask questions.

You can also use a chatbot and appointment scheduler.

Adding more than one conversion opportunity could improve the UX. Visitors will have an easier time contacting you online. Otherwise, you might miss a chance to generate leads from your dental website. 

8. Post Reviews

Consider adding reviews to your dentistry website as well. Happy patient reviews can boost your credibility. On-the-fence patients will see your current patients already love and trust your practice.

You can feed your Google My Business reviews to your website using a plugin. Don’t forget to encourage people to post reviews throughout the year!

9. Work With a Pro

If you’re feeling stuck while working on your dental website, don’t feel stressed out. Instead, consider hiring a professional team.

A professional web design and development agency can improve your dental site with your goals in mind. You can improve the front and backend of your site. Your dental website will look and function as intended.

Then, you can generate more dental leads and set your practice up for long-term success.

Toothy Leads: 9 Tips for Creating the Perfect Dentistry Website

Improving your dentistry website will help you generate fresh leads throughout the year. You can book more appointments and help more patients. As your search engine rankings improve, you can boost brand awareness, too. 

Set your practice up for growth and success with these dental site tips today.

Need help developing your digital marketing strategy? We’re here for you.

Contact us today to get started.

Website Design and Development: The Key Strategies to Know

Website Design and Development: The Key Strategies to Know

by | Jan 26, 2021 | Dental Marketing, Google, Web Design

Are you a small business wondering how to go about designing a website?

You might be relying on your Facebook page as a substitute, or even wondering if you need a website in the first place. Have you considered the price you’d pay for not having one?

Website design and development involves a large devotion of time and energy, but the rewards are huge. Shockingly, almost half of entrepreneurs still don’t have a small business website. Furthermore, only a third of those who do, use their website to communicate news to customers and leads.

If you don’t want to see your small business screaming into the void, it’s time to consider a website. If you don’t have one, how will you win customers from the half of your rivals that do?

We’ll explain how to know your audience, develop a strategy, hone your content, and track the results. Read on!

Know Your Audience

When you’re designing a website, the first thing to keep in mind is your target audience. If you have anything less than a crystal-clear image of your buyer persona, then you need to first invest time in researching the profile of your typical customers.

Once you have established a firm understanding of who you are aiming your website towards, you are better able to be in-sync with them. Successful website design and development will require accurate information to feed every stage of the process.

When you’ve internalized a personification of your average buyer, creative decisions, like tone, color, and imagery, flow with relative ease. If your small business has never conducted audience research, then the results will uncover a wealth of knowledge to define or evolve your brand identity.

It’s important to note that after defining and establishing the tone of your business, you should be consistent throughout the website. Staying “on brand” ensures that your message resonates with clarity and cohesion. Website visitors are all too easily distracted and don’t need much of an excuse to get confused and leave.

Research the websites of your successful competitors, who will have invested resources in honing their messaging already. Identify what is working for them, but also uncover gaps in their strategy. You can incorporate these findings to meet and exceed the competition.

Mood boards are useful to visualize creative approaches and see how well ideas communicate.

Develop a Strategy

Website design strategies that work focus on one primary goal and secondary goals that reinforce the main-agenda.

The primary goal of a small business website might be to turn leads into customers. A secondary goal could include turning existing customers into repeat business. The third goal of your website may center on engagement – encouraging your visitors to share your content on social media, for instance.

A simple layout wins in nearly all cases at capturing the limited attention of your target audience. It’s important to have a responsive website design. This entails having your website optimized to resize and restructure for various browsers and platforms.

Desktop users were once the majority of website visitors, but now, the lion’s share of site viewers will use various mobile devices. Tablets and phones of all shapes and sizes mean that a flexible and adaptable design is essential.

Map out the buyer journey when conceiving the structure of your website. Create a flowchart to prototype your site so that important pages are easy to navigate. Later, a more detailed sitemap can come together as the structure becomes more fully formed.

Attention, Interest, Decision, and Acquisition (AIDA) is a principle that can help shape the buyer funnel. 

Focus on Content

There’s another variant of the AIDA principle: Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. This can work within the website pages themselves to ensure that all selling pages are effective at driving action.

A website built in a content management system (CMS) like WordPress will make it easier to create, delete, and maintain content.

Choose appropriate keywords that are popular in your industry, and build your website contents around them. Use them in the title, meta descriptions, and headings, but don’t over-insert them awkwardly. Your copy must have a human linguistic flow so that search engines can easily read and index your pages.

Create regular content with a focus on your keywords to increase your organic search engine optimization (SEO) rankings. Your goal should be visibility high in the results on the first page of Google, for your industry and in your area. Regular articles, written in a blog format, are very effective at accomplishing this. 

When developing a website, make sure that the information on each page is presented in an easy-to-read fashion. Good use of white space is important, so as not to overload the eyes.

Break up the copy so that it is most effective in a hierarchical sense. Frequent one-line spaces between paragraphs make the copy easy to scan. Keep paragraphs 2-3 sentences long for the same reason, and make good use of headings, subheadings, etc.

Track Results

Winning website development strategies often treat all pages as if they were landing pages. Sometimes, unexpected pages may rank very well, causing high numbers of visitors to land on them.

By tracking your results using Google Analytics, you can optimize these pages further still. Website speed is important so as not to lose visitors who might get frustrated by the loading time. Website analytics are useful at monitoring performance and engagement.

It’s a good idea to have a call-to-action (CTA) at the top of pages, perhaps in the menu. This CTA is intended for buyers who are further along in the decision-making process. A second and more prominent CTA would be well-placed near the end of the page contents, with the rest of the page built around it.

A/B testing involves serving up two slightly different pages to a split audience. The page style with the best results wins.

Remember, the goal of any website geared around selling is to win out over the competition. Competitive analysis tools are useful in website design and development to serve this objective. 

Finally, you must always evolve and tweak your website because a successful website is never a finished, static entity.

Website Design and Development

We’ve shown that website design and development requires careful planning if you want to hit your goals. Don’t be overwhelmed by the hard work that’s necessary to beat your competitors.

If you’re a small business owner developing a website, we can help you. We specialize in website design and provide creative marketing services to small businesses across the nation. Our core services are web development and hosting, but we also offer custom photography, videography, and search engine optimization (SEO).

Contact us today, and we’ll connect you with your audience.

4 Tips for Small Businesses Impacted by COVID-19

4 Tips for Small Businesses Impacted by COVID-19

by | May 26, 2020 | branding, Customer Service, Dental Marketing, Harris & Ward, marketing

Navigating a Pandemic [4 Tips for Small Business Owners Impacted by COVID-19]

The coronavirus is causing financial difficulties for businesses across the U.S. And while everyone’s first priority during this pandemic should be to stay safe and healthy, maintaining your business’s health is equally as important. 

We know that many small businesses (ourselves included) are facing more challenges than ever during the current COVID-19 pandemic. With customers shying away and team members working remotely, it’s time to think outside of the box.

So, how can small businesses survive the turbulent times ahead in 2020? There’s no easy answer; however, there are things you can do today to help navigate these challenging times. 

The W.A.R.D Method

Work Remotely (when possible)

Your team may already be working remotely or you may be preparing for that possibility in the future. For some businesses, this may only mean a slight adjustment but, for others, this can drastically change your daily operations.

As more businesses have moved towards remote work, they are taking advantage of the growing number of digital tools popping up to help teams stay connected and productive. Consider the following recommendations for keeping your team connected during COVID-19:

  • Collaborate with your team using a shared document, a video meeting, or a team chat room. Note: If possible, avoid group texts as this can be overwhelming outside of business hours. 
  • Ensure your team has access to important documents from anywhere by uploading them to a cloud-based service through a product like Google Drive or Dropbox.

In cases where remote work is not an option, take care to ensure you’re adhering to best practices to keep your team safe and sane during these uncertain times.

Additional Resources: Managing From Home? Here’s How to Keep Your Team Engaged During Coronavirus • COVID-19 Has My Teams Working Remotely: A Guide for Leaders

Adjust to New Customer Behavior

With new regulations emerging daily, customer behavior is changing faster than ever before. As a result, you may want to consider shifting your operations temporarily to fit your customers’ new behavior.

Start by considering what you have to offer your customers. Are there ways for you to offer those products or services in a different format? Take a look at just a few of the samples below. 

If you’re in: and typically offer: Consider offering:
Education/Consulting Instruction/consulting in-person virtual sessions for clients. 
Residential services In-person meetings or estimates Virtual estimates through photos, video chat, or facetime.
Restaurant Dining In

Offer takeout or delivery.

 

Offer frozen meals that people can stuff in their freezer.

 

Offer recipes that clients can make at home.
(Non Essential) Health Services In person

Go mobile and go to individuals homes.

 

Offer virtual consults over Facetime.
E-commerce Online Make sure people know what’s in stock, delivery times, and if it’s made in the USA promote that!

 

 

Rework Your Offerings (Temporarily)

If you can’t sell what you normally do, how can you use your resources to create a new, more relevant offer?

During this chaotic time, you may find yourself in a situation where simply adjusting your existing offerings won’t work. In that case, you just might be able to shift your entire lineup to something more relevant (and useful) to your target demo.

For example – many local distilleries, and even a Kentucky-based CBD company, have shifted their focus to producing hand sanitizer temporarily. This not only makes great use of otherwise wasted byproducts but also helps a ton of people!

The key then becomes acknowledging this change and broadcasting it to those who need to know. 

Distribute Information

Regardless of the industry you’re in, COVID-19 will inevitably shift some facet of your business. This could mean a change in hours, a temporary closure, or, again, a change in the types of products or services you offer.

As a small business owner, the best thing you can do is distribute the information about these changes across as many platforms as possible.  This includes updating your website and business listings on platforms like Google and Bing, as well as posting to all of your social media channels.

If you’re unsure where to even begin with your planning, consider taking advantage of the complimentary strategy sessions being offered by many agencies. This can be a great way to conserve resources while still being strategic about your business operations. 

 

 

Organize Your Social Media Strategy with a Content Calendar

Organize Your Social Media Strategy with a Content Calendar

by | Feb 14, 2020 | Social Media, Dental Marketing, Facebook, Harris & Ward

Organize Your Social Media Strategy with a Content Calendar

Written by Allison Cooper, Project Coordinator

Managing social media can be a little daunting at times. Algorithms seem to change as soon as you’ve mastered the previous one, best practices vary from platform to platform, and learning the types of content that your target audiences engage most with can take a while to nail down. 

There’s a lot to consider here and different accounts will be fueled by different strategies – but we all have one common goal – to create engaging content that pleases our target audiences and encourages them to take action – whether that be a like, a follow, purchasing your product, or giving your brand a shout-out.

After you set a few key goals that you want social media to accomplish for your brand, it’s time to put some strategy behind it, which is where content creation comes into play. It’s great if you have awesome ideas for content, but if you have no way to get organized enough to make it actionable, it’s likely that your efforts to wow your audience will fall flat. The key to getting an organized social media strategy is planning ahead with a content calendar.

So, What Can a Content Calendar Help You Accomplish?

Content calendars can make it easier for you to plan social media content in advance, whether that be on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Let’s take a look at three benefits of using a content calendar!

  1. Plan ahead. Using a content calendar can help your team start looking ahead at key dates such as holidays and events that will be important for your brand to capitalize on. This can make it easier to devise a strategic plan for social media campaigns.
  2. Post with consistency. By mapping out your posts ahead of time, you’ll never be without ideas. Putting a content calendar together will make it easier to avoid writer’s block and will encourage more consistent posting across platforms.
  3. Save time. Because you’ll be planning content in advance, it’ll save you a lot of time throughout the week. If you set a day each week or month to plan out content, you’ll be able to use your time more effectively. You’ll know in advance what content is being published and you won’t be drafting posts as you go, which will take a lot of pressure off you and your team. Better yet, you won’t be worrying about deadlines cause they’ll already be met!

Content calendars are also a great way to keep track of the types of content you post and posting frequency. By having access to a week or month’s worth of content in front of you, it’s easier to identify the types of content performing well or poorly. From here, you can see if you need to change up your content strategy, and plan out next week or next month’s content accordingly. Having a broader view of your social media posts allows you to more easily flag types of posts that you want to repeat, and if you set up your calendar efficiently, you have a platform to organize this into a content repository.

Make Your Content Calendar Work for You.

To create your calendar, there are a few different routes to go, and some companies have special applications to help you build your calendar and organize posts. For an accessible solution, Google Sheets or Excel are perfect tools to create a streamlined system that works for you. At Harris and Ward, we create monthly and weekly views in Google Sheets and separate these views into different tabs. We place broader content ideas in our monthly view and draft the actual posts in our weekly tab. If your content moves through a line of approval, Google Sheets is also a good system for sharing between team members.

While there are best practices for creating a content calendar – you can certainly customize it for what works best for your respective social accounts, posting frequency, business model, and much more. In a world where best practices change so frequently, it’s beneficial to have a system in place to plan ahead and make changes quickly. For the social media manager, a content calendar makes this possible. 

What If I Still Don’t Have Time for Social Media?

Social media offers an easy way for potential customers to express interest in your business and your products/services. But, there’s no question about the commitment for business owners — strategic social media takes dedicated time and effort. Unfortunately, that’s not a luxury most small business owners have. So, if you find yourself lacking the resources to develop your own content calendar or you just aren’t sure how to begin, contact us today to learn more!