Is Your Website Working For You or Against You?

The classic baseball film Field of Dreams is known for the oft-quoted line “build it and they will come.” That snippet of wisdom imparted by a ghostly voice haunts the main character played by Kevin Costner until he takes on the task of making a baseball stadium in his corn field. Spoiler alert: Everyone thinks he’s crazy until they do in fact come from far and wide to watch America’s pastime in the middle of an Iowa corn field.

Orthodontists have the same optimism about their websites that Costner’s character did about his corn field baseball stadium: Just build it and patients will come queuing up.

Sadly, for many (or most) orthodontists, they launch their website with the best of intentions – getting all the pertinent information in there like phone number, email address, a Google Map that shows all those new patients how to get to the office for a free consultation, and perhaps some stock blog posts about the joys of straight teeth and clear aligners. Then, they sit back and wait.

Sometimes life doesn't imitate art.

Your website is a finely tuned machine that attracts the right visitors and then converts them into leads that turn into patients. Or at least it should be. It also needs to be more than a billboard. It needs to be an active space that funnels visitors to a place where they can engage through chat, forms, or contacting a live agent to answer questions and build trust in your services through smart, up-to-date content. At the same time, your website has to be responsive to multiple screen orientations (like desktop, mobile, and tablet) and it needs to be organized, easy to navigate and tell your story. Your website has to communicate your unique brand - why your practice is different in the marketplace from all other practices. Everyone straightens teeth but why should someone come to you over some other option.

If a potential patient isn’t engaged with your website or can’t because it’s too difficult to navigate, then they will bounce, and probably to one of your local competitors or – heaven forbid – a mail order aligner company. Marketing data shows that 97% of your visitors don't convert to consultations.

Optimizing your website for conversion is imperative. You have to lead the user where you want them to go. That means plenty of calls to action to contact you directly and putting them in the right place near killer content that engages the potential patient. You also have to deliver on your promise. Do not wait to contact anyone who does convert on your website by filling out a form. Data suggests that contacting someone within five minutes is 21 times more likely to end up in a sale than 30 minutes. Even better, implement a chat function on your website for immediate engagement.

At People + Practice, we will work with a client to develop a website that takes full advantage of all of our digital marketing services, creating a 360-degree program that begins and ends with customer engagement with your brand, quickly and efficiently – whether it’s on social media, email, or Google search results. When a potential patient finds a website built by People + Practice, they will stick around and they will convert.

Looking to learn more? Get in touch with People + Practice today!