Seven Steps to a Patient-Friendly Website
e-Marketing for Physicians
This is the fourth article in a six-part series for M.D. News.
M.D. News
Greater Akron/Canton Edition
May/June 2008
With physicians being urged to provide online electronic medical records (EMRs) for their patients in the next few years, having a website may go from a useful marketing/ information tool to a mandated requirement.
The push for EMRs on both the state and federal level, combined with the fact that more patients are online and desiring access to online services and communication than ever before, means that having a patient-friendly website is becoming increasingly important for your medical practice.
When patients enter your site, they should be able to define two things right off the bat: your website's purpose and whether or not your site offers relevant information. If within a few clicks your site remains cloaked in mystery, it's a safe assumption that visitors will leave your site for greener pastures.
Following are seven steps to creating a usable website that helps you retain and build your patient base:
Step 1 - Identify your user. Depending on the nature of your practice, you may have a diverse patient base (i.e., Internal Medicine) or a more specialized one (i.e., Pediatrics). Ask yourself some questions: Do you care for mostly older patients?Do you care for minors whose parents would be accessing your website?Do you have a lot of new patient referrals to your practice? Your website should be tailored to suit your patients' age and situation as much as possible.
Step 2 - Identify why users are coming to your site. There are a number of reasons why a user may be visiting your site; here are just a few:
- They're searching for a new doctor/medical practice
- They've been referred to you and are looking for more information
- They're looking up your contact information
- They're looking for medical related information
- They're seeing what services/procedures you provide.
- Make sure your website addresses your visitors' questions.Not only is it a good marketing strategy, but it will also cut down on phone calls.
Step 3 - Provide content in an easily accessible manner. Accessibility includes features like font size options and text descriptions of images for vision-impaired individuals. This is especially important in the medical profession, since you are more likely to have visitors using assistive technology when browsing the internet. You may remember that the Target stores chain was sued because their website was inaccessible to people with disabilities.
Step 4 - Have easy-to-understand navigation. A website-s navigation is usually a vertical or horizontal links like About Us, Contact Us, Meet Our Staff, Our Services, etc. You want to ensure that your navigation is clean, easily identifiable, and consistently located on every page of your site.
Step 5 - Ensure that your site works, especially in different browsers. It's always frustrating to go to a website and then find that parts of it don't work properly. (Online forms and interactive elements are notorious for causing problems in different browsers.) An easy solution is to have a member of your staff check out the forms from time to time, and if you notice something isn't working, fix it promptly. Also, keep in mind that websites display and function differently, depending on the browser. While Internet Explorer is the most popular browser in the marketplace, you may have visitors using Firefox, Safari, or Opera.
Step 6 - Make your contact information easy-to-find. Don't make your users dig around for find your contact info. A good idea is to have a detailed Contact Us page, as well as address/phone information at the bottom of every web page within your site.
Step 7 - Make your content easy to read. Web users don't tend to read paragraphs, they scan bullets and headlines. Try to keep the content on your site as "easy to digest" as possible. Also keep in mind that your site visitors may use different terminology than you do as a medical professional. For instance, if you have content on your site regarding a myocardial infarction, try referring to it as a heart attack instead.
These seven steps will go a long way to making your site patient-friendly. If you want to ensure your site is 100% accessible, however, check out the W3C guidelines for the Web. W3C is a group that sets standards on the Web, and a reputable web developer will know how to build a site according to their guidelines.
