Congratulations!  People have done a search and landed on your website.  But, can you keep these visitors?  Can someone viewing your site for the first time, immediately recognize what you do and what your services are?  If they want to navigate your site, is it easy for them to do so?  If they want to contact you right away, is your number front and center without them having to search for it?

Take a good luck at your site from a visitor’s perspective.  Now may be the perfect time to revamp your website to increase your visibility and your business.

Here are 7 Essential Keys to an Effective Website

1. Strategy

Map out the:

  • Message that you want to convey- what your business does, what service it offers and any products you sell
  • Tagline
  • Logo
  • Keywords for search engine optimization (SEO)*
  • Relevant content
  • Videos and podcasts that sync with your services
  • Testimonials
  • Case studies
  • About us
  • Value proposition
  • Resources

*An effective SEO plan reflects the terms that your patients and clients search for to find you. Your content, videos and podcasts should encompass these terms as well.

2. Incorporate the Right Images

It’s time to get personal.  Rather than using stock photos that may represent your business, why not have images of you and your business. Take photos (or have a photographer do them if you can’t obtain quality images) of yourself.  Include photos of your staff members so that prospective clients/patients can become familiar with them even before stepping into your office.   Consider photos of medical equipment and examination rooms so that new timers know what to expect.

3. Contact information

Make sure your business telephone number plays a prominent spot on the home page and also on every additional page.  When a lead or client wants to call you, they may not want to flip to original pages to find the number; you’ve then lost them.

Also have a contact tab so that visitors may reach you for additional questions (which also gives you THEIR email address and telephone number for future use)

4. Insert RSS, Social Share and Follow Buttons

Give your users the chance to share your content with their friends and family. Without these share buttons, you can lose out on a chance to go viral and a lot of social media traffic from people already reading your blog!

The buttons contain icons of different social media website and allow you to share the page directly on the social media channel of your choice.

These buttons act as a non-pushy tool that encourages social sharing from your audience.

Some tools to get you going are the two free, social sharing tools SumoMe and Shareaholic.

 5. Don’t forget Calls-to-Action

Once your visitors land on your site, do they know what action to take next? Lead them to the action that you want them to take such as:

  • Calling to make an appointment
  • Subscribing to your newsletter or podcast
  • Asking for the free bonus (ebook, white paper, etc.) to solve their pain points
  • Click here for more information
  • Sign up for a webinar or tele seminar

They won’t take the action you would like them to take if you don’t provide them with direction. Call-to-action buttons are one of the many elements that indicate the next step user should take on a page.

6. Weed out the Bad Elements

Check all the links that you created on your site and make sure that they are not broken, leading to the dreaded “unknown 404’s”. Fix all of these so that you don’t frustrate the viewer.

Get rid of bulky, long content, complex animations and technical jargon that detracts from the messages that you want to easily convey.

7. Mobile Optimization

Make sure to optimize your site for mobile devices. “Google says 61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site they had trouble accessing and 40% visit a competitor’s site instead”. A full  80% of internet users own a smartphone, and use it for viewing all internet sites.

Even if your website was effective when originally built, it may be time that you need to update or revise it to stay in tune with technological advances and the needs of your audience.

Assessment

Contact us at 561-325-9664 for a free website evaluation.