7-Step Dental Website Checklist To Capture New Patients

Many dental patients prefer searching and booking their dental appointments online. That is why your website is a great Dental marketing asset that you need to invest in for your practice.  In marketing for dentists, there are social media channels where you can create a page for your dental office. However, you cannot put all your cards on one deck. Proving the importance of diversifying your online presence through a website was when Facebook and Instagram shut down last October 5, 2021. Since many businesses were relying from these social media channels to operate, they were affected by this incident. The key is to have a backup so that when social media moguls unexpectedly or permanently shut down, Your website will still keep your online presence run and book appointments for you. When creating your website, remember that it should have a great visual impression on your potential patients. 

In fact, According to research from Stanford University, 46.1% of people prioritize the website design as a determining factor of whether or not a business is credible enough. 

Just like on every dental marketing strategy, your website should not only look aesthetically pleasing but should also be in line with your brand.

Its main goal is to inform your online visitors about your practice and services.

 Your website visitors’ experience should be convenient, user-friendly and pleasing enough to make it easier for them to book dental appointments.  

To help you see the key ingredients of what makes a great website, we have created a website checklist that will help you to convert traffic to actual dental appointments.

• Clear Website Navigation

Your dental website design needs to be responsive and easy for patients to navigate. 

Your website should be logical, and your content should be easy to understand and intuitive based on the screen size, and device orientation.

Your design elements should be high resolution, and your font style should be legible. 

Since 63% of people search online using a mobile device, your website should also be mobile-friendly. Your website design and features should also look proportional on both browser and mobile devices. 

Flexible navigation will help your potential patients to contact and book you easily in just a click away.  

Your top bar and footer should include your contact information, alongside workable social media icons and links. 

Make sure that you include click-to-call for your patients to book you. 

It also creates better opportunities to contact your practice either through your number or social media channels.

Lastly, check your website speed. The ideal mobile speed is under two seconds.

Is the loading time at least 3 seconds or less? If it did not meet the required speed, consider removing installed plugins you don’t use, enable file compression, or remove bigger photos that affect the loading speed.

If you don’t know how to test your site speed or professionally check your site navigation, a dental marketing agency can help you accurately test and report your site.

2. Create Multiple Website pages and Asset

Dental marketing companies offer dental marketing services for website development that include website pages that showcase who you are as a brand, your service, testimonials, and contact details. 

For your homepage, you need to capture the audience right from the start. 

Make it clear and concise for your visitors who you are, your why, and what you are offering. 

Have a balance of professionalism and personal touch on your homepage to make it relatable.

You can redirect your audience to your “about us” section of your website to know more about the history of your practice and story, expertise and your team’s overall experience in dentistry. 

You can also include a quote that is related to your brand promise for your patients. 

Add a high-resolution of photos and videos of your office, team, and patients and sneak peek of your procedures and include a call to action to message you for inquiries. 

It looks better to include your team’s photo and not just a stock photo so you can instantly build trust with your potential patients. 

Speaking of trust, you can always ask your top patients for their testimonials. It will give you a credibility boost coming from your existing patients.  

Then include a call to action button to contact or book you online. Your contact information should be visible on the bottom part (footer) of your website.

It includes your address, office hours, social media links and office numbers and email. It will also be better to embed a google map where your visitors can check your exact location, see your online reviews. 

3. Brand Focused Website Copy 

Your main website page needs to have a clear copy that represents your branding and unique value proposition. 

Right from the start, you need to convey to your online visitors who you are, your services, and what makes your practice different from others using an impactful headline.

A great brand slogan will set you apart from your competitors. 

Create a strong copy showcasing your offered value throughout your website pages.  

A well-thought description of your services and packages and how they benefit your patients stand out amongst the competition.

If you want to have a highly converting copy, you can create a survey to your top patients to help you develop the commonly used language and cater those words to make your website copy.

Learn your target patients’ top fears and worries. How does their schedule would look like?

Create a copy that will answer all of those questions and doubts. Removing your patients’ fear and meeting in between their needs will lessen any questions, build rapport, and increase convenience for them to book you. 

Hiring a dental marketing agency for a highly converting and brand-focused copy for your website is ideal if you want to stand out and convert your traffic to booked patients. 

4. Call to Action Should Stand Out 

Do you have any current promos for your patients? Utilize a call to action for this campaign on your homepage.

Make your buttons to book an appointment or sign up for your newsletter stand out.

Is it enticing to click? Use the correct colour, text, button design, and placement can help you grab attention for your patients to book your practice. 

Your “book” buttons should be easier to recognize. Place them on the right part of the home page and other pages. 

Add a patient online form on your website and add an option for patients to pay you online. Make it super easy for them to contact you from your call to action buttons. 

If you are not sure what an effective call to action might look like, dental marketing agencies are offering consultation for which call to action suits the best for your dental practice goals. 

5. Install Trusted plugins 

Plugins allow your website to operate some features. They should be installed because your website will not run well without them.  

Install plugins that are important for your WordPress site.

A WordPress Backup Plugins assist an installation backup and migrate or restore the crashed site. A security plugin to help your website be more secure.

 A contact form plugin is needed to collect contact details and order forms and an SEO plugin is used to optimize your website for search engines. It also optimizes your content title, your meta descriptions or any keywords that you want. 

Remember, only install plugins which are necessary because the more plugins installed on your website, the more plugin problems occur including slowing down your website.

As many fancy plugins, you can install, keep in mind that the goal of your website is to convert. If your users have a poor website experience due to a slow website from plugins, you will lose your customers. Remember, less is more. 

6. Activate Google Analytics 

Google Analytics keeps track of all your content that receives views and shares from your website and your level of progression. 

From the data collected, you can improve the most viewed blogs to improve their appeal to the customers. 

Google Analytics gathers the data of your blog page views. From the given data, you can improve your top blog to generate more traffic. 

Ensure that Google Analytics is installed on your website to improve your chances of booking a patient or subscribing to your newsletter.

7. Create a Lead Magnet 

Creating a lead magnet is an essential and powerful tool in dental marketing because it helps you build email lists from a willing target. 

It helps you build rapport and customer relationships and improve sales. You can create a dental hygiene checklist to be given for free for your leads.

Make sure that even though it is a freebie, your patients will learn from it and improve their lives. 

Once you create your lead magnet, create a social media campaign for gathering new leads. 

If you want to create a professional lead magnet and execute an effective campaign, you can always ask a dental marketing agency to do it for you. 

Final Thoughts 

Aside from having social media pages for your dental practice, having a website during this digital age is necessary. You need to have a backup to where you can still target your lead patients even when social media sites might shut down. 

We discussed our seven easy dental website checklist to guide you on how to start or rebrand your website that converts your traffic into appointments. 

Even though, this guide can help you kickstart your website, hiring a dental marketing agency for this type of dental marketing service will make your website development easy and make you book an appointment more effectively.  Not sure where to start with your website? Contact us for a 30-minute free dental marketing consultation today.