Grow Your Medical Or Healthcare Business Online With WordPress
The digital age has not only transformed the way business is done worldwide, it has also created new challenges and great opportunities for health services professionals and financial service providers.
Online Challenges For Health Businesses
Today, more than ever, businesses in the medical and health sector must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do you have to be fully involved in the community you serve, you must also develop and maintain an active digital presence. This includes having an effective website and learning how to better promote your services online.
As well as spending dollars advertising offline, businesses in the medical or health industry are now also finding that they need to invest a more significant amount of their budget to develop and manage a website that can drive new leads, engage visitors, outrank the competition in search engines and social media, and give their business a wider degree of marketing exposure online.
This means that your website not only has to look professional, load fast, and your website has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, the needs of your website may change over time and some aspects will need to be frequently updated. This requires the implementation of a well-planned website and content management strategy.
Another problem that medical services providers (and most businesses) face, is that they have an average of thirty seconds to provide users with what they are searching for or they will go away.
“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
Opportunities For Health Professionals
As well as facing significant challenges, there are also plenty of online opportunities available for businesses in the health or medical-related industry that can adapt to meet digital demands and can think strategically when it comes to improving their online marketing skills.
This detailed guide will help you uncover opportunities to attract and engage more visitors and build more online credibility for your medical or health business.
As well as providing tips and information on cost-effective ways to improve your business online, we also place special emphasis on the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress content management system (CMS) to power your medical or health-related business website.
For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System (CMS), see these articles:
- How A Poorly Built Website Can Cost You Potential Customers
- Everything You Need To Know To Grow Your Small Business Online Using WordPress
Ways To Improve Your Medical And Health Center Site
We’ll start first by reviewing the basic stuff. In this section, we’ll look at how to improve your medical website and get better results online. We will look at what pages you need, what content works best, layout and navigation, etc.
If you need website planning assistance, check out the detailed step-by-step guide we have written here: A Basic Guide To Web Site Planning For Non-Technical Business Owners
Your Web Pages
Professional business websites require several essential pages. Let’s go over the pages your should have and how to set up your website for best results.
Description Of services And Products
It’s essential to have a page that describes your products and services. Depending on which area of health you specialize in, your page could include services like:
- Medicine & Surgery – e.g. ear, nose and throat, pulmonology diabetes, maxillofacial surgery, continence management, renal, endoscopy, ophtalmology palliative care, etc.
- Dentistry – e.g. cosmetic dentistry, children’s dentistry, oral health, restorations, dentofacial orthopedics, emergency dental, etc.
- Cardiology – e.g. cardiac monitoring, chronic heart conditions
- Prenatal and Postnatal – e.g. birthing, maternity services, etc.
- Child Health – paediatrics, child development, children services, etc.
- Diagnostic – mammography, lung screening, radiology, gynaecology, psychosis, allergy testing, etc.
- Pathology – lab testing and analysis, emergency pathology testing, insurance and corporate testing, speech pathology, etc
- Counselling services – mental health services, alcohol, tobacco & other drug services, couples, diet and nutrition counselling, social work services
- Alternative treatments – acupuncture, aromatherapy, colloidal silver therapy, massage therapy, chiropractic, hypnotherapy, etc.
- Other medical services/therapies – weight management, sports medicine, fertility services, stomal therapy, inherited diseases, prosthetics, sleep therapy, home and community care, clinical information, medical equipment, etc.
Make sure to 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 your services and why they should book an appointment.
Who We Are
The ‘About Us’ page should give a description of your business and what your business stands for, its unique approach, philanthropy, etc.
It’s important to mention any awards, recognitions, accreditations, certifications, publications, associations, etc., that can be used to promote your medical services and set yourself above your competitors.
(List all of your industry awards certifications, recognitions, accreditations, publications, associations, etc. in your About Us page. Screenshot source: squaremedical.com.au)
Team Profile Page
If you are searching for simple ideas to sell more products online, then make it easier for your prospects to get to know, like and trust your business better.
You want your business to be relatable. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your employees. This page should include a photo and a brief bio. Since most visitors are probably not familiar with health-related terms it should tell who they are and what their specialties are. You may also want to explain what those specialties mean. It can also include social buttons that will allow your visitors to follow your staff members on their social networks.
In this page, make sure to highlight your staff member’s qualifications, how their skills add value to your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.
(Make sure to add a page that introduces your staff members to prospective new clients. Screenshot image sourced from: southperthchiro.com.au)
For a detailed tutorial on how to easily create and add an easy-to-update list directory of employees or team members to your site using a free plugin, go here: How To Easily Create A Simple Staff Directory In Your WordPress Site
Job Opportunities
List any career opportunities within your clinic. It can include training offered, benefits, professional development, etc. You can also include stories of trainees who have risen within your business and information about new career opportunities in the medical or health-related industry.
Include also a positions available section in this page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to this page, join your contact list, follow your social pages, etc.
Case Studies
Testimonials from previous clients and case studies are a great way to attract prospective clients and showcase the services you offer. Adding a page with case studies and testimonials from past clients also helps to provide social proof online.
(Add a page to your site with case studies and reviews from clients. Image source: arrowsmiledental.com)
If you want to learn more using client case studies and reviews improve your business online, go here: Improve Your Visitor-To-Lead Conversions With Knockout Customer Testimonials
Contact Page
Having a contact page is absolutely vital.
Your contact page should provide:
- Name
- Location
- Telephone
- Facsimile
- Contact email address
- Map
- Website address
- Contact form
- Name of person to contact
- Links to social media pages
- Online chat feature
If you operate in different areas you should make that clear when displaying your address and contact information.
Consider also including links to an FAQ section, frequently-visited pages, booking request, support page, newsletter, blog, etc.
Add A Medical Blog
A blog is a powerful marketing tool. Many blogging platforms are built around a content management system that allows you to promote your business by publishing timely content such as events, product releases, training information, opinions and discussions, promotional videos, infographics, etc.
If you already have an existing website, then consider adding a WordPress-driven blog to promote your medical organization.
If you don’t have a website yet, or if your existing website is very hard to keep updated or not giving you the results you want, then WordPress can become both your website and blog.
You may not know this, but an expertly configured WordPress site can turn into an automated traffic system that can help deliver new visitors to your site, simply by publishing regular content to your website.
(An expertly configured WordPress site can generate web traffic automatically to your site)
To learn more about this go here:
Legal Info Pages
It’s crucial for medical and health services practitioners organizations to ensure they have a website that complies will all legal requirements online. This is not only important for establishing trust and credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that no local, regional and federal laws or regulations are being broken wherever you provide services.
Adding the legal pages below to your site will help you stay out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Google), and other potential sources of legal threats and inconveniences:
- Contact Page
- Privacy Policy
- Terms And Conditions Of Use
- Website Disclaimer
- Affiliate Agreement
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- DMCA Notice
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Linking Policy
- Health and Financial Disclaimers
- Refund Policy
- Video/Audio Terms
- and others
If you want to learn more about adding legal pages to your website, refer to this article: Why You Need To Add Legal Pages To Your Website
How To Improve The Content On Your Site
In today’s highly competitive global business economy, the sooner you begin to engage in the practice of content marketing, the quicker you will begin to differentiate yourself from your competitors.
Providing useful content with information, advice or tips will get your visitors sharing it with others and coming back for more. This is a great way to educate your visitors and prospects about using your services and products.
For example, if your business provides weight management services, then some of the areas you could cover as content on your site:
- Emotional causes for weight issues (possible causes, how to identify yours)
- How to figure out how many calories you consume each day
- How you eat your food - just as important as what you eat (eat at table, chew slowly)
- Vitamins and minerals that aid in weight loss (chromium, calcium, magnesium, etc.)
- Etc.
You can also create a series of informative articles that will help your your prospective clients gain a better understanding of your services, by explaining benefits, procedures, costs (including payment plans, insurance coverage, etc).
Include keywords in your content that readers will search for online.
We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive regular training emails with easy-to-digest information that will show exactly 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 strategies. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!
Ways To Improve User Experience
Improving your site’s user experience (generally referred to as UX) will help keep visitors coming back and using your site. This section will show you different ways to improve your visitor engagement and user experience.
Adding RSS Feeds
Adding RSS feeds can help to improve visitor engagement and UX in many ways.
If you provide content that adds value to others, other businesses may want to syndicate your content to their visitors.
Some of the benefits of syndicating your content to other websites using RSS feeds, include:
- All of your content updates are kept in one place
- Content distribution doesn’t rely on email
- Your feeds can be shared online
- Users can subscribe to your feed
- A feed provides links to your content
- Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
- RSS provides a number of ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. users can view your content on their mobile device using feed readers)
- It’s built into WordPress
There are also benefits to adding syndicated content to your website from other websites, such as the fact that you don’t have to write, manage or update the content.
You can find RSS feeds with loads of useful content for your website by visiting sites of health-related government departments and key industry bodies.
Below we have listed some examples of feeds you could add to your site:
- US Department Of Health And Human Services – e.g. Blog feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SelectedHhsBlogPosts, etc. You can also select specific RSS feeds, like feeds on women’s health issues (e.g. Breastfeeding, Healthy aging, HIV/AIDS, Mental health, Smoking and how to quit, 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. BMJ Evidence-Based Nursing, ADA DiabetesCare , BMJ Emergency Medicine Journal, Toxicological Sciences, Cambridge Journals Online, etc.) go here: http://www.healthplusplus.com/wiki/List_of_RSS_feeds_on_health
- National Institutes Of Health (www.nih.gov) - Find various feeds on health-related topics here: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
- FDA – Get RSS feeds on fda-related news and topics like enforcement reports, MedWatch safety alerts (human medical products), pet health, drugs, 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 (www.cdc.gov) - Get various health-related feeds 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 RSS feeds section (e.g. Fitness & nutrition: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Nutrition.xml)
- MedicineNet.com – 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. Medications, Mental Health, Migraine Headaches, Depression, Prevention & Wellness, Thyroid, etc.)
- MedicalNewsToday.com – MNT Featured Headlines: http://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/featurednews.xml
- Medical News Today – You can also select specific RSS feeds here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsfeeds-rss (e.g. Medical Students/Training, Pulmonary System, Compliance, Hearing/Deafness, Alcohol/Addiction/Illegal Drugs, Pediatrics/Children’s Health, Medical Practice Management, etc.)
You can also search online for general RSS feeds, e.g. “medical rss feeds” or search for feeds on specific areas, e.g. “pain management rss feeds”, “emergency medicine rss feeds”, “fitness rss feeds”, etc.
(RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your medical-related website’s user experience.)
Checklists & Forms
Adding checklists and charts to your site is a fantastic way to increase user engagement, add value to your audience and provide something unique. Checklists and charts can provide visitors with useful step-by-step information and resources to perform steps. They can also be great client educational tools.
Checklists, charts and medical forms can address subjects such as:
- Booking appointments
- Checklists for pre or post treatment
- Health checklists and charts for specific conditions
- Dental checklists – e.g. first visit, oral maintenance program, cosmetic dentistry, etc.
- Fitness and nutrition program checklists
- General charts & infographics (e.g. caloric level of different foods, the importance of sleep at different stages of development, etc.)
Other Tools
Providing unique online tools, gadgets and applications on your website can help increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to your potential clients. Health-related calculators are useful tools for your website. Other tools could include things like nutritional tools, and even recipes.
In part 2, we take a look at a number of online tools you can add to your site using WordPress plugins and themes that can also help improve seo, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.
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This is the end of part one of this article on ways to build your health or medical-related web presence.
Click here to continue:
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum