What Specifications Should a Professional Medical Website Design Meet?

Medical Website Design | Healthcare Websites for Doctors

What Makes A Great Medical Website Design?

The Design and Content of the Website

If you're building a patient centric website, your website must boast high quality, relevant and correct medical content. From detailed service pages and specialty explanations, to niche deep dives around your most frequently asked questions. At the very least, your practice website needs the following:

1. Unique Branding: Standing out from the competition is a critical component of any website design. Visitors are not only coming to your website, but also going to your competitors website as well. The quality and aesthetics of your website also reflect the perceved quality of your technology, patient care, moderness, and overall practice. Branding includes online assets such as colors, logo, custom graphic design assets, phrasing and language used in your content, and imagery.

2. Media and photography: The most compelling aspects of a website are the visual elements on display. Using images and video to engage visitors and educate them around complex medical procedures while enriching the on-page experience is a key part of any medical website design. Using custom images and video is preferred whenever possible. Stock photography is valuable for augmenting pages, but when it comes to photos of your office or phyicsian profiles, professional grade custom photography is essential.

3. Information on each Speciality: The biggest way for you to add value on your website is by providing authoritative medical content. When it comes to websites for doctors, write for your patients, not yourself. The key here is to make your content educational, accurate, and easy to use and understand. For your patients, this means writing at a sixth grade reading level, keeping sentences short, and avoiding medical jargon whenever possible. List service pages that you offer like LASIK, cataract surgery, glaucoma, botox, or whatever applies to your healthcare website. Not only will these crucial parts help build trust and educate your patients, but it will also lead to higher rankings in organic search results. Authoritative content is one of the most important ranking factors in search engines.

4. Supporting topics: Does it feel like other websites for medical practices are ranking higher than you? Using educational content goes beyond words on your website in the form of service pages and pillar pages. When you create unique, engaging blogs that your patients care about and can use in their daily lives, you can start seeing results. Blogs, a form of content marketing, can help you get in front of patients while creating one-of-a-kind content that Google uses to increase authority of your website. If you're considered an authority in your area, it can make a significant difference for your practice's website.

5. Patient Engagement: Building a beautiful, stunning medical website that's also responsive is great, but don't forget about patient engagement objects. You need items on your healthcare website that make your patients want to interact. Enter engagement objects, like a LASIK self-test or a cataract self-test. These self-tests are quick and easy for patients to take and start the conversation with your practice. Having interactive elements on your website makes it much easier to generate leads and track conversions.

6. FAQ and Answers Section: Having educational content on your website involves making sure you answer frequently asked questions about the different medical procedures that you offer. Having thorough FAQ sections helps educate patients through personalized high quality information, and it also helps your website rank for additional related keywords. The best part is that answering the most basic questions about specific eye conditions and procedures is all you need to do!

7. Individual Pages for Each Doctor: Your patients deserve to know who they will be seeing at your practice before they see you. Having robust bio pages for your doctors helps build trust and expertise with patients, while ensuring details are accurate and up to date. If physicians at your practice change, make sure to change these as necessary. Have you added any new specialties? Do doctors work at multiple clinic locations? Make sure to include this in your bio pages to keep your patients informed.

8. Contact Information: Does it feel like your patients can't find your medical practice when they come in for appointments? A key component of any healthcare practice's website is making sure you have up to date and informative location pages. One way to do that is ensuring these pages are SEO optimized and all locations match up across your website, Google, and Local profile listings. This is a must do if you want your patients to be able to find you both online and in person. Your medical marketing efforts won't get you very far if your listings aren't accurate on your website.

The Technical Aspects of the Website

1. Fast loading times: One second may seem short, but when you're loading a website, it can feel like a lifetime. Speed is crucial if you want a good user experience on your medical website. The user experience is vital for everything in medical internet marketing today, including rankings. If the visitor closes the window because the site won't load, you lose your chance at a conversion. 83% of consumers expect a website to load in three seconds or less. Without a site that loads quickly and efficiently, the design won't matter.

2. Mobile responsive: In 2022, you must have a mobile-friendly website that's responsive. At least 50% of website visitors will see your site using a mobile device, not a computer. We take a responsive website design viewpoint. That's why we make websites that work on tablets, phones, and computers. They respond to the device that you are looking at the website on. We design medical sites with a mobile-first mindset to ensure websites are equally functional on both desktop and mobile devices.

3. Security: Websites are under constant attack. Usually being hit with brute force attacks and malicious code injections in attempts to compromise the website and use it for spam based purposes. Having premium hosting servers, clean code, and following best practice security protocols such as taking regular backups, having an SSL on your website and regularly updating software are essential to keeping your website online.

4. HIPAA Compliant Forms: Do you use forms on your medical website? You may be violating HIPAA and not even know it. Many forms are in violation due to the intake of PHI (patient health information) on the forms, and how the data is stored. This includes items like date of birth, social security numbers, and more. Make sure you are using HIPAA compliant forms.

5. Accessibility: Having an accessible website should not be an afterthought. By following the WCAG 2.1 ADA standards during the design and development processes, doctors can be sure their website is accessible to their patients, and ADA compliant from the beginning.

What is the Process for Designing a Medical Website?

It starts with your dedicated Digital Marketing Coordinator and Project Manager. We begin every website project with an in-depth discussion of our client's vision, brand, and goals. We work diligently to transform that vision into a reality, providing insights to improve your website performance, updates on industry trends, and advice for continuing to get the most out of your website.

We provide custom-tailored solutions and invite each client to participate actively in the website design process. Being an active participant in the medical website design project ensures client satisfaction from start to finish.

Each website is a unique representation of the practice it was built for. No two websites are the same, and you'll find that our medical websites stand out from the crowd.

Finding Design Inspiration

Check Out Competitors' Websites

One of the best ways to get inspired for your website design is to look at your competitor’s websites. See what elements they’re using that you like and take inspiration from their designs. Of course, you don’t want to copy them outright, but rather use them as a starting point to come up with your own ideas. Try to think outside the box and come up with something that’s unique to your brand

Look at Websites in Adjacent Industries

When you're looking for inspiration for your website design, it can be helpful to look at websites in adjacent industries. This will give you a broader perspective and help you to see the design possibilities that are out there. For example, if you're a medical practice, you might take a look at websites for law firms, or if you're a hospital, you might look at websites for Fortune 500 companies. This will help you to see the different design styles that are out there, and it will give you some ideas for how to create a unique and polished website that represents your business.

Collaborate with your Website Designer

When it comes to finding inspiration for your medical website design, the best thing you can do is work hand-in-hand with your designer. They're the ones who understand your brand and target audience best, so they're in a great position to help you come up with ideas that are both on-brand and appealing to your audience. Ask to see some of their most recent designs, and be prepared to offer feedback. Tell them what you like and don't like, and be specific about why. This will help them create a design that's perfect for your business and your target audience.

Discovery

Design

Coding

Finalize

Building the Website

There are four main phases of building a medical website. Each is an important step in getting the outcome you want, while ensuring your website is build to the highest quality standards.

Phase 1: Discovery

During discovery, your Project Manager will work with you to identify your practice goals, differentiators, and identity. Together, we will map out design concepts and branding to help make your medical website truly unique.

We'll create your website sitemap to ensure the website is true to your practice. We discuss procedures and services to highlight and emphasize the website conversion factors that will help you bring in patients that best fit your practice's patient persona.

During this phase, we additionally plan the content that will be highlighted on the homepage and implemented in your initial design.

Phase 2: Design

Design is where our team takes the concepts from phase one and begins to bring them to life. During this phase, our web designers take the information set forth during discovery and create a partially coded design for your review.

We will present our initial design and make modifications based on practice feedback and collaboration. You will see your medical website design come to life here! Our team of specialized individuals, combining the best of technology, design, and internet marketing, creates ideas that succeed.

It takes about 50 milliseconds (0.05 seconds) for users to form an opinion about your site. 94% of first impressions for a website are related to design.

Phase 3: Programming

After you have approved the website design, we'll move everything over to our development team. During this phase, we add all the content to your website and format it with photos and video.

We browser test your website at this junction to ensure it is fully functional, regardless of what kind of device users are viewing it on. We will optimize the website for site speed, set up ADA best practices, and prepare the site for any marketing initiatives we may be completing for the client, particularly SEO.

Phase 4: Finalization

After finalizing the website, you are welcome to review the site, read through its content, and make any adjustments needed before we launch. Then, it's time to celebrate your beautiful new website and share it with the world.

Medical Website Design FAQ's

In general, the cost of a website design and development project for healthcare practices can range from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars or more. It comes down to the amount of time and resources it will take to make it, which can vary widely depending on a range of factors, including the size of the website, the functionality and features required, integrations needed, and the level of customization desired.

The major factors that can influence the total cost of a medical website design project are:

Functionality and features: While some feature requests can be solved using third party plugins, if you envision new specific functionality or integrations, those can require developers and designers to spend time creating one-time custom solutions. This can include things like e-commerce functionality, integrations with third-party services, custom forms, and other interactive features.

Customization: The level of customization, especially control of design customization abilities on the final product can also influence the cost of the project. If you need staff to be able to edit page layouts and design elements frequently, and do not have a website maintenance program, building easily editable, but robust and hard to break design components will require additional time.

Branding and Design Elements: Assets such as logos, graphics, animations, typography, and custom interactive assets.

Content Creation: If the website adds a significant amount of custom content such as services information, copywriting, photography, or video production, this can also increase the cost of the project.

Platform and Technology: The choice of platform and technology can also affect the cost of the project. Some platforms and technologies are more complex and require more specialized expertise to develop, which can increase the overall cost. Using open source CMS solutions with large developer and educational resources is highly encouraged. It also ensures you will own your website once it’s built.

Website Size: The more pages, usually the more expensive a website will be.

Project Timeline: How fast you need the website done can also influence the cost. If it’s a rush order, agencies will need to shift workloads and allot more resources to the project.

Overall, the cost of a website design project will depend on a variety of factors, and it’s important to work with a professional medical website designer or agency to understand the specific requirements of your project and get an accurate estimate of the total cost.

Usability: A website should be easy to navigate and understand. Visitors should be able to find the information they are looking for quickly and easily, especially when looking to contact your practice or schedule an online appointment.

Aesthetics: The branding should be visually pleasing and consistent in its design. The use of color, typography and imagery should be well thought out to create a cohesive and attractive overall look while engaging visitors to explore and interact with the site.

Branding: The look of your website is a direct psychological representation of your practice. Use branding to signal the values and messaging you want to send to your patients. Not only about your services, but about your professionalism and quality as well.

Functionality: Responsiveness, fast, easy to navigate, secure, and all systems go. Your website should run like the valuable piece of equipment it is.

Content: The website’s content should be clear, authoritative, trustworthy, and written for your audience, not for you.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Optimizing the website for search engines should be a forefront consideration of any website design. Without good SEO, your website will not be found by users searching for what you provide online.

Accessibility: Website accessibility should be a priority when designing for users with disabilities and those using assistive technology. Essential features to consider include keyboard navigation, content structure, and color contrast to comply with web accessibility guidelines.

Call to Action: Call to Action should be visible and well placed to direct visitors to take the desired action. This includes click to call, online scheduling, important announcements, and “Contact Us” or “Learn More” call outs. Placement of these elements should be strategic, allowing visitors to quickly take the desired action.

Clinic or Practices: Websites for clinics or medical practices provide details about a particular clinic or specialty medical practice. These websites are referred to as brochure websites, and fall under the lead generation category. Thus, it’s important for these websites to have modern and custom designs, including the services they offer, the location of the practice, and up to date contact methods with ways to schedule appointments online. Clinical websites are most often designed and maintained by marketing agencies.

Physician Microsites: Sometimes doctors will have their own website. These microsites are used for search engine ranking purposes, and to act as a biography website physicians can use to publish articles, reference current research, add testimonials, and act as a single source of truth for contact information and current work location. Microsites by definition are small, and generally have a main home page and blog section.

Hospitals: Hospital websites are all encompassing, covering every aspect of a hospital’s services. This will include details about the hospital’s facilities and departments, directions, parking locations, billing, as well as details about the medical staff and the services each department offers. Hospital websites tend to be large and maintained by an internal hospital IT team.

Medical Associations: Websites for healthcare organizations such as accreditation associations, industry publications, and trade groups function as news and event sources. Depending on the organization, these websites tend to be modern and showcase functionality such as events pages, online memberships, member directories, and downloadable resources.

Ecommerce: Ecomm medical websites allow users to purchase medical products, such as prescription drugs, contact lenses, or medical equipment, online. Ecommerce businesses need to have the ability to accept payments online, while also having up to date inventory order management systems integrated into the website. Medical e-commerce designs are lead gen focused, and will do best when showcasing high quality images of their products, along with customer reviews, pricing, and detailed product documentation. It’s common to see B2B ecommerce websites be slightly more reserved with basic, clean designs, while B2C medical ecommerce websites will be more brochure style and have unique, vibrant web designs.

Physician Directories: Directories act as virtual yellow pages for users to do research on individual doctors. Information such as contact, reviews, biographies and educational history can usually be found within the physician profiles. Many directories are operated by individual companies who charge a monthly fee for doctors to be listed on the website. These websites also fall under the lead gen category. Designs for physician directories tend to use neutral colors, and focus on typography and information architecture to have data clearly organized and easily accessible.

Personal Health Records (PHR): Health record companies allow patients to track and manage their own health facts, such as medications, allergies, and medical history. Most often they are owned and operated by an electronic medical records company, or a hospital itself. Many people cite these websites looking old and out of date. But their main purpose is to simply provide users their data, and do not need to be the trendiest website out there. PHR websites often also have a mobile app associated with them for use on phones.

Medical Reference: Medical journals, guidelines, and clinical decision tools provide data and resources for healthcare professionals to use in their day to day work settings. These websites are considered provider facing, and used by working professionals and students as educational resources and reference material.

Continuing Education: Professional education websites provide resources for medical students and healthcare professionals, such as online courses, lectures, continuing education credits, and exams.

Clinical Trial Registration: Pharmaceutical companies or hospitals will utilize websites for providing instruction for ongoing clinical trials and may allow patients to enroll in a trial if they meet certain criteria.

Healthcare Job Boards: Some job boards may be specialty specific and focus on attracting healthcare workers from targeted fields, while others will be wide ranging and operated by institutions. Medical job board sites will have neutral designs, with the ability to create profiles and allow healthcare professionals to search for and apply for job openings via forms.

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