You know the orthopedic surgeons at your clinic are awesome — but does your clinic’s website communicate that to your current and potential patients?
Great web design is critical in helping your practice reach prospective clients and turn them into clients for life. Your website should be an easy-to-navigate hub of information for prospective patients and current patients alike and reinforce their confidence in your providers and services.
Of course, as an orthopedic surgeon, it’s unlikely that your busy days at the practice include sharpening your web design skills. That’s where we come in! This blog will guide you through the web design process, from your initial thoughts all the way to the final design. Whether you’re creating a website from scratch for your orthopedic practice or considering a redesign of your existing orthopedics site, you’re bound to find something helpful among our tips.
To help get you started on your web design journey, here’s a list of the top 5 web design tips for orthopedic surgeons:
- Audit Your Existing Site
- Consider Your Audience’s POV
- Determine Your Web Design Goals
- Don’t Be Afraid to Delegate
- Use Best Practices for Web Design
By familiarizing yourself and your team with these web design tips for orthopedic surgeons and their practices, you’ll be better prepared to start the web design process and achieve success with your final site design.
Tip 1: Audit Your Existing Site
If you or your clinic have an existing website, start by evaluating what you do and do not like about that site as the business owner. Ask yourself:
- What design elements of your current site do you like? What would you replace or change?
- What do you find successful about your current site? What do you find less successful or outright unsuccessful?
- Why is your target audience visiting your website?
- When your target audience visits your site, what are they trying to learn or achieve?
- Are there technical issues on your current site, like broken links or non-existent pages?
- Is there information missing that ought to be included in future iterations of your site?
Considering your answers to these questions will help you develop a good baseline for future website design and development. You may also examine your website’s analytics to determine what type of content is the most and least popular among your audience.
Tip 2: Consider Your Audience’s POV
Speaking of your audience, a good general rule of thumb is to look at your website through the eyes of your target audience. After viewing each page of your website, ask: Did I as a prospective client or patient find the information I was looking for? Do I know what to do next? Can I quickly get find information I need? Was I able to scan the page and find what I needed?
If you answered “No” to any of these questions, your website is likely not optimized to meet the needs of your target audience. By looking at each element of your site from your audience’s point of view, you can better understand the changes that will need to be made as you move into the web design process.
Tip 3: Determine Your Web Design Goals
What is your new website or website redesign intended to accomplish? Maybe you are focusing on updating your site branding to be better aligned with your practice’s mission and goals. Or, you might be keeping your branding the same or mostly the same, and focusing instead on improving the user experience on your site. Perhaps you want to expand the content on your site to better serve your prospective and current clients, or to boost your site’s SEO rankings.
Whatever your web design goals for your orthopedic surgery practice, it’s important to define them clearly before starting to design your site. Your goals will inform the size and scope of the design project and guide the choices you make therein.
Tip 4: Don’t Be Afraid to Delegate
Now that you’ve invested time into thinking intentionally and purposefully about your site and your target audience’s experience, it’s time to think about the website design process. Consider:
- Are you going to design and build your site internally, or do you want someone else to design and build it for you?
- How much can your internal team handle? Can you do all, some, or no portion of the work internally?
- How much assistance do you need from an agency or website developer?
- Are there certain features you need on your website? Will those programs require additional or special software, programs, or permissions?
It’s important to be honest with yourself and your team about your web design capabilities. If you and your team do not have much web design and development experience, it is best to partner with an agency or website developer who can assist you with everything from strategy and development, hosting, website CMS and copywriting to launching your site and long-term maintenance.
Tip 5: Use Best Practices for Web Design
Again, to make your website look and feel as professional and trustworthy as possible to prospective clients, it is generally best to hire an agency or developer who will be able to apply the best practices of web design to your site. Very broadly, these best practices include easy-to-read headlines, sub-headlines, and organized sections with content hierarchy.
For orthopedic surgery practices and clinics, it’s especially important to make it easy for visitors to quickly access self-service areas of your site, like “Schedule An Appointment,” “Complete Patient Forms,” or “Pay Your Bill.” Clear headlines and easy-to-read drop-down buttons on both desktop and mobile can help boost these CTAs to your audience.
It’s also advised for orthopedic practices to prominently display the credibility of their providers on their site. A clearly visible “Our Providers” or “Meet Our Team” button on your homepage should take visitors to an easy-to-navigate page featuring profiles of each of your providers. These profiles should include credibility-building aspects like their education and degrees, certifications, publications, years of experience, areas of specialization, etc.
Here’s a few quick and easy “do’s and don’ts” for your orthopedic surgery website design:
List of Services
-
SSL CertificateList Item 1
Do secure your website to protect you and your site’s visitors. This is especially important in the healthcare industry, as you will need your site to be HIPAA compliant.
-
BrandingList Item 2
Do accurately represent your brand. This not only applies to design elements like logos, but also to the photo elements present on your site. For example, if you use photos of a clinic setting on your site, they should be photos of your clinic that are owned by you. Prospective clients should be able to visit your site to get a good idea of what to expect when they walk through your doors, including the physical appearance of your practice.
-
User ExperienceList Item 3
Don’t make it complicated or difficult for your audience to access information. For an optimal user experience, visitors should be able to get to the information they’re looking for in three clicks or less.
-
Image SlidersList Item 4
Don’t use image sliders to display important information. When was the last time you sat on a site to watch eight images scroll by? If you wouldn’t want to get information that way, assume your target audience won’t, either.
-
Text in Graphics
Don’t add important text to static images on your site. Google can only read the alt text of an image, not the text in the graphic, so any words included in the image are not helping to boost your SEO.
-
Content Hierarchy
Don’t pack too many focuses into one section on your site. It is much easier for viewers to find and read the information they’re seeking if each focus has its own, clearly marked section.
Finally, remember that your website can and should continue to be a resource for patients following their visit or procedure — and it can also be a tool to build your practice’s online presence and reputation.
It may be wise for your orthopedic clinic’s website to include materials and resources for patients after surgery. These might include aftercare best practices, a scheduling tool specifically for post-surgical follow-up appointments, and/or guidelines for identifying concerning post-op symptoms that may indicate infection or an immediate need for medical attention.
On this or a separate page, you should also encourage patients to leave a positive review for the clinic and their providers on relevant platforms, like Google Reviews, Facebook, and industry-specific sites for medical professional reviews. You may include direct links to these sites, or embed a submit form.
Final Words on the Top Web Design Tips For Orthopedic Surgeons
Ultimately, a successful website design or redesign comes down to a clear understanding of your goals for your new site and your design preferences. Even a basic, initial grasp of these concepts as you approach the web design process will better position you to create a site that meets your needs as an orthopedic surgeon.
At
DAYTA Marketing, we’re experts in understanding our clients’ wants and needs for their website design. If you’re interested in learning more about how an agency like DAYTA could help your orthopedic surgery practice,
visit us online today!
Share This Post
Our Recent Posts
