In our last blog post we discussed the necessity to “keep it clean” when designing your website in the healthcare and small business world. In this article, I want to share with you the 5 most important healthcare website design tips that we utilize here at New Wine Web Design. These tips are vital stylistically, functionally, and also help your website rank better on Google and other search engines. So buckle up, here are the 5 healthcare website design tips you should know before you jump into the deep end of website design for your practice in Phoenix, Gilbert, Tempe, Chandler, Prescott or Flagstaff.
1. High Quality Photography
With the advent of faster internet speeds, faster processors, higher screen resolutions and more advanced ways to compress images, web photography has never been more important. Websites are becoming more simplified, and with that the focus is shifting more and more onto the imagery on your website. To make sure your business is perceived as professional and cutting edge, it’s best to hire a professional photographer to take photos of your staff, your practice or place of business, and other any local places you want to highlight. Stock photos are also a useful tool, but avoid implementing the same tired models posing against a white background. Find photos that look more realistic, and if you are a medical or dental practice that specializes in cosmetic cases you will absolutely want before and after shots of your patients.
2. Responsive/Mobile Friendly
We discuss this one in a previous article, so for more details about responsive web design click here. To sum up, make sure your website it is smartphone and tablet compatible!
3. Less is More
Modern web design is all about simplicity and minimalism. Absolutely avoid popups, annoying landing pages and videos that start playing with volume automatically (header or background videos with optional or no sound are a nice new trend). Medical websites especially should utilize plenty of white space to maintain a clean, organized appearance.
4. Fast Page Load Times
While you want to have quality, crisp photography on your website, don’t go overboard with uploading extremely high resolution images. Make sure that they are web-optimized and the correct dpi. Many potential patients or customers will leave a website if it doesn’t load within 3 seconds. If your site is built with a CMS like wordpress you can also use server-caching plugins to speed up your load times. If you keep your website minimalist as we discussed in the “less is more” section you shouldn’t have to worry too much about load times. However, google does penalize slow loading sites, so use tools like tools.pingdom.com/fpt/ to check your site speed.
5. Reviews
Reviews are vital in building trust with your website visitors. If your patients are willing, have them write you a review and put it on your website. It is also important to link to external review sites like Yelp and Google.
Images used under creative commons license – commercial use (12/2/2015) plantronicsgermany (Flickr)