Websites for health practitioners: what to include

Every part of your website should be customised for your brand and your specific practice, from your home page to your contact page. The last thing you want is for your web design to look—or worse, feel—the same as all the other healthcare websites out there. Your site should be designed to visually communicate how you are different and how you can help, so you can connect with potential patients faster and assure them that you are the expert best suited to solve their problems.

Your health website should be designed sympathetically to your client’s needs, so accessibility and security must also be carefully considered. Here are just some of the key issues I’ve encountered when designing websites for health professionals.

Keep your patients at the centre of everything you do

Your healthcare website isn’t for you. It shouldn’t be judged by what your friend’s sister thinks of the colour combo. Or what your hubby makes of the fonts. Your site is, first and foremost, for your current and prospective patients. What do they need to see reflected there? Your brand and the branding on your website need to be able to connect with the people you want to help. The easiest way to think about this is not to imagine a fictional ‘ideal client’ like so many marketing gurus will try to do. That’s hard and long-winded. Just try to think of ONE patient who you have loved working with and who has benefitted from your services. Put yourself in their shoes and think about how your site design speaks to them.

Of course, your informative content will also need to speak to those patients. Patient testimonials, comprehensive general health advice, and in-depth, relevant information are all crucial to connecting with site visitors. I discuss this in my article “Websites for healthcare professionals: what to include in five steps.”

Design should not be an afterthought

Your website is a critical part of your branding and marketing. It’s the front end that allows potential patients to connect with you, so it should reflect your brand and be tailored specifically to your delivery of care.

Mental health professionals, in particular, will be acutely aware of the myriad competing distractions for patients with mental health challenges. A too-busy site can be overwhelming and a challenging introduction to your services. So, minimalist design is a must.

A great healthcare website uses a clean design and is mobile-friendly. Ensure your colours and fonts are kept to a minimum, match your logo, and are used consistently across your entire site. Your site design should evoke feelings of support, well-being, and care so your visitors know they’re in good hands and can trust your expertise.

If you’ve tried DIYing your site or wrangled help from your neighbour’s nephew’s best mate, you know that despite your best intentions, it’s easy to make the mistake of just throwing something together that looks vaguely ‘pretty’ but fails to do the one thing you need it to (attract and convert leads). This brings me to my next point.

Help Google help you

Your website should be user-friendly and allow potential clients to find what they need quickly. If patients can’t find what they want fast and with as few clicks as possible, they’ll leave. Or in web speak, they’ll ‘bounce’. And Google will down rank you if everyone who lands on your site immediately leaves. Google boosts sites that people spend time on because time on a site proves a site is helpful to its users. If users stay on your site, Google will recognise your authority and expertise and serve you up to more people searching for your help. So you may as well help Google help you.

The best healthcare websites have a logically structured site easily understood from your navigation bar. Your services should be instantly understood — no one likes landing on a website only to question what the business does (usually due to a lack of strategy and research, which never bodes well as an initial introduction).

Your home page should give an overview of your services, and all your other pages should be succinct and in line with what your patients need to know about you. At the same time, your more comprehensive information can usually be moved out of your web pages and into your blog, where visitors expect to see long-form articles, to avoid confusing your primary website pages. Your contact details should be clearly visible, and there should be a frictionless process that makes it easy for prospective patients to book a consultation.

Accessibility

People with disabilities are not a niche market. They are your potential patients, too — so your website design should be accessible. Ensure that font size, contrast, and colour combinations are all easy to read on any device so it’s legible for everyone in every setting. There are a lot of tools out there to help ensure your site is accessibility compliant, so make sure your web designer knows that accessibility is important for your healthcare practice, and they’ll be able to advise you.

Security

Any health or medical website should have the security of patient health information front of mind. The Commonwealth’s Privacy Act of 1988 (Privacy Act) applies to Australian government agencies and private-sector health service providers, regardless of size. Healthcare websites are always siloed from the medical records system, so this isn’t concerned about health records. However, you may be collecting other patient data. A key example is your booking forms. Most medical websites accept information about patients or potential patients via enquiry forms when they book an appointment online, so the security of your website should not be overlooked. The Australian Digital Health Agency has a great guide to help small healthcare businesses ensure they’re getting privacy right, so check that out for more info and ensure your web designer is across it.

Conclusion

One of the first things I can see impacting trust and professionalism is a simple lack of brand and unique practice focus. This is an easy fix, and we’ve helped many healthcare businesses freshen up their sites in as little as just one day using our Clever Day service.  Nailing your brand and focus forms a simple cue to support your potential and returning patients. The other key design features essential to ensure your healthcare website has health at its core include design alignment with your patient needs, excellent user experience that makes it easy for them to find the information they’re looking for, accessibility and security.