Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress
The information economy has not only revolutionised business worldwide, it has also created an increasing number of challenges and great opportunities for businesses in the medical-related sector.
Online Challenges For Medical And Health Businesses
Today, more than ever, health services providers must work harder to stand out from their competition and find new clients. Not only do you have to participate in the community you serve, you must also develop and maintain a strong digital presence. This includes having a dynamic website and learning how to better promote your services online.
As well as spending money advertising offline on newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and television spots, etc., businesses in the health industry are now also finding that increasingly larger amounts of their budget will need to be directed towards developing and maintaining a website that will bring new leads, engage visitors, outrank the competition in search engines and social media, and help give them a wider degree of marketing reach online.
This means that your site not only has to look great, your web pages have to be fast-loading, and be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that your site’s needs will change in time and sections may need to be updated often. This requires having a well-planned web and content management strategy.
One other difficult challenge that medical organizations face, as do most other businesses for that matter, is that you have only about thirty seconds or less to help users find what they need or they will go elsewhere to get their needs met.
“Websites have evolved into central information hubs where service information is still present but enhanced with web portals, hyperlinks to state and federal sites, and a variety of free tools.”
Michael Alter, http://www.accountingweb.com/technology/accounting-software/tips-for-improving-your-website
Online Opportunities For Health Practitioners
As well as facing many new business and technology changes, there are also plenty of online opportunities available for businesses in the health or medical industry that are willing to adapt to meet the challenges of the digital economy and think progressively about marketing themselves better online.
This detailed guide will help you uncover opportunities to generate more clientele and improve your health-related business presence online.
As well as providing general website improvement tips, we also place special emphasis on the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress content management system to power your health website.
For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform, see the articles below:
- How A Poorly Designed Web Site Can Lose You Business
- Understanding WordPress – The Small Business Owner’s Guide
Practical Tips For Improving Your Health Practice Site
This section looks at ways to improve your website and get better results online. We will look at what web pages you need, what content works best for medical-related websites, layout and navigation structure, etc.
If you need website planning assistance, go here: A Money-Saving Guide To Web Site Planning For Business Owners
Your Website Pages
Professional websites require several essential web pages. Let’s discuss these.
Services And Products Description Page
It’s essential to have a page that describes your services and any products that you offer. Depending on which area you specialize in, your page can list services like:
- Medical And Surgical – e.g. acute pain management, neurosurgery hematology, cosmetic surgery, gerontology, respiratory, infection control, eye diseases operating theaters, etc.
- Dental Services – e.g. preventive dentistry, children’s dentistry, oral health, teeth whitening, orthodontics, emergency dental services, etc.
- Cardiology – e.g. heart surgery, coronary care
- Prenatal & Neonatal – e.g. birthing, maternity services, etc.
- Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
- Diagnostic services – breast screens, skin cancer, radiology and imaging, gynaecology, magnetic resonance imaging, allergy testing, etc.
- Pathology – laboratory testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, food and water testing, speech pathology, etc
- Counselling services – mental health, alcohol, tobacco & other drug counselling, domestic abuse, wellness, social development services
- Alternative treatments – Chinese medicine, aromatherapy, reiki, yoga, chiropractic services, hypnosis, etc.
- Other medical services/therapies – weight management, othopedics, fertility services, speech therapy, inherited diseases, artificial limbs, hearing aids, home care, community health, medical supplies, etc.
List all of the services you provide, not just the ones you specialize in. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about the benefits of using these services and direct them to your appointment booking page.
About Us
This page should give a description of your business and what your business stands for, its unique approach, supported community services, etc.
Remember to also include any professional awards, recognitions, accreditations, certifications, associations, publications, etc., that you can use to promote your practice and to set yourself above the competition.
(List all of your awards certifications, recognitions, accreditations, associations, publications, etc. in the About Us page. Screenshot image sourced from: squaremedical.com.au)
Staff
Are you looking for quicker, simpler and cheaper ideas to grow your business online or get prospective clients to interact more with your site? Then help your prospective clients get to know, like and trust your business better.
You want people to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff members. This page should include a photo and a brief bio. Since most visitors won’t be well-versed in medical or health-related terms it should tell who they are and what they specialize in. It should also explain what those specialized areas do. It should also include social buttons that will allow your site visitors to follow selected staff members on their social networks.
On this page, make sure to outline your person’s expertise and qualifications, why they are an invaluable asset to your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.
(Make sure to add a ‘meet the team’ page. Image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on how to create and add a simple employee directory to your site using a free plugin, go here: How To Easily Add A Simple Employee List On Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills
Job Opportunities Page
This is a listing of career opportunities within your clinic. This page can include type of training provided, benefits, advancement opportunities, social aspects of working with your business, etc. You can also include stories of recruits who have risen within your organization and information about upcoming career opportunities in the health or medical industry.
Maintain a positions available section in this page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to this page, subscribe to your newsletter, follow your social pages, etc.
Testimonials
Case studies and reviews from clients are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase your services. Adding a page with reviews from clients and case studies also helps your medical or health site to provide social proof online.
(Add a web page with case studies and reviews from clients. Screenshot image sourced from: arrowsmiledental.com)
We have written extensively about using testimonials, case studies and client reviews to improve your business results online here: How To Improve Your Sales Conversions With Compelling Testimonials
Contact Us
Having a contact page is absolutely vital.
Your contact page should provide visitors with some or all of the following:
- Business Name
- Location
- Telephone
- Fax
- Email address
- Google Map
- Website address
- Contact form
- Request for more information – contact details
- Social media web addresses
- Online chat feature
If your business services several areas you will want to make this clear when displaying your address and contact information.
Consider also including links to an FAQ section, frequently-visited pages, online booking form, support page, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.
Add A Health Blog Section
A blog is a powerful marketing tool. Blogs typically comprise of a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to promote your business using timely content such as news, new releases, useful articles and tutorials, opinions on current topics, videos, infographics, etc.
If you already have an established health-related site, then consider adding a WordPress blog to create more exposure for your business.
If you don’t have a website yet, or if your existing medical or health-related site is hard to keep updated with new content or not delivering you the results you want, then WordPress can be used both as your business website and business blog.
Not many people know this, but WordPress can turn into an automated traffic-generation system that will help begin delivering an ongoing stream of targeted visitors to your site, simply by adding content to your website on a consistent basis.
(WordPress can automate your traffic generation)
To learn more about this go here:
Legal Information Pages
It’s crucially important to ensure they have a compliant website. This is not only important for building credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no laws and regulations are being contravened wherever you do business.
Depending on what services and products you provide, adding the legal pages below to your website will help keep you out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Google), and other potential legal threats or inconveniences:
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms Of Use
- Website Disclaimer
- Affiliate Agreement
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- DMCA Notice
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Health and Financial Disclaimers
- Refund Policy
- Video/Audio Terms
- etc.
We have written a comprehensive article about adding legal pages to your website. Go here to learn more about this: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site
Improving Your Web Content
In today’s ultra-competitive global business economy, the sooner you start engaging in the practice of content marketing, the sooner you will begin to differentiate yourself from other competing businesses.
You want to provide useful content with great information, tips or advice that will get your readers to share your web pages online and come back for more. Publishing content is the most effective way to inform and educate your visitors and prospective clients about using your products and services.
For example, if you provide products that help people lose weight, then some of the areas you could cover in your web content include:
- Nutrients your body needs on a daily basis (carbs, proteins, minerals, vitamins, fats)
- How to calculate how many calories you consume each day
- Is hypnosis and effective weight loss treatment?
- What salad dressings can derail your diet (and healthier choices)
- And many other content topics
You can also create a series of informative articles that will help your your prospective clients gain a better understanding of your health services, by explaining benefits, procedures, costs (including payment plans, insurance coverage, etc).
Include the keywords in your content that readers would search to find you online.
We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive a comprehensive series of training emails with actionable information and practical tips that will teach you how to drive more traffic to your website, save money creating useful content that will add value to your site visitors and grow your business online using content marketing. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!
Improving User Experience
Improving your site’s user experience (known as UX) will help you keep visitors coming back and using your site. This section will show you ways you can improve visitor engagement and user experience.
RSS Feeds
An RSS feed provides many benefits for your business.
If you provide useful content, other sites will want to syndicate your content.
Some of the benefits of having other businesses syndicate your content, include:
- All of your updates are kept in one place
- Content distribution doesn’t rely on email
- Your feeds can be shared online
- Users can subscribe to your RSS feed
- A feed provides links back to your site
- RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
- There are several ways readers can receive your content (e.g. view the content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
- RSS is built into WordPress
There are also benefits when it comes to adding syndicated content to your site from other sites, such as the fact that you don’t have to write, manage or update the content.
You can find many useful RSS feeds for your website by visiting sites of relevant government departments or well-known industry bodies.
Here are examples of feeds you could add to your website:
- US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SelectedHhsBlogPosts, etc. You can also choose specific RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Emergency preparedness, Environmental health, Heart health and stroke, Menopause, Pregnancy, etc.) here: http://womenshealth.gov/news/rss/rss-feeds.html
- US National Libraries Of Medicine – For a directory of RSS feeds from leading medical journals, publications and websites (e.g. Dermatology Times, ADA DiabetesCare , The Journal of Immunology, BMJ Journal of Clinical Pathology, The New England Journal of Medicine, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
- National Institutes Of Health (www.nih.gov) - Get various health-related news feeds here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
- US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) – Get FDA-related news feeds (e.g. enforcement reports, food allergies, recalls, radiological health, etc.) and podcasts here: http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/ContactFDA/StayInformed/RSSFeeds
- Department of Health UK (https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-of-health) – Latest news: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-of-health.atom
- The Department Of Health (Australian Government): http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/xml/rssLatestNews.xml
- Department Of Public Health (Australia – State Level): e.g. NSW – http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/pages/rss.aspx
- Centers For Disease Control And Prevention - Find various RSS feeds on health-related topics and podcasts here: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/rss.asp
- Medical News Feeds: You can search medical news RSS feeds in major news publications like the NYTimes feeds section (e.g. Fitness and nutrition: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Nutrition.xml)
- MedicineNet – MedTerms Medical Word of the Day: http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/dailyword.xml. You can also select individual RSS feeds here (http://www.medicinenet.com/rss/article.htm) (e.g. Lung Conditions, Cancer, Cholesterol, Diet & Weight Management, Digestion, High Blood Pressure, etc.)
- MedicalNewsToday.com – Medical News Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
- MedicalNewsToday.com – You can also select individual feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Schizophrenia, Medicare/Medicaid/SCHIP, Blood/Hematology, Menopause, Primary Care/General Practice, Allergy, Restless Legs Syndrome, etc.)
You can also search online for general feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific topics, e.g. “fertility rss feeds”, “insomnia rss feeds”, “medical practice management rss feeds”, etc.
(Use RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to improve your health or medical-related website’s user experience.)
Provide Downloadable Charts And Checklists
Adding checklists and medical forms to your site is a great way to increase user engagement and add value to your visitors. Checklists and charts can provide users with useful instructions and resources to get necessary tasks done. Checklists and charts can also be great educational tools.
You can provide a range of checklists, charts and forms covering topics such as:
- Booking appointments
- Checklists for post-surgery recovery
- Health checklists for specific medical conditions
- Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, oral maintenance program, cosmetic dentistry, etc.
- Weight loss and exercise program checklists and charts
- General charts & infographics (e.g. sugar content in different foods, the importance of sleep at different ages, etc.)
Online Tools
Providing unique online tools, gadgets and applications on your website can help increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to potential clients. Calculators, for example are popular tools for your website. Other tools could include things like nutritional tools, or even recipes.
In part 2, we take a look at a number of online tools you can add to your website using WordPress plugins and themes that can improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and generate more web traffic to your business.
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This is the end of part one.
Click on this link to continue reading:
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)