7 Website Mistakes That Are Costing Your Dental Practice New Patients

Your website handles more first impressions than your front desk does. These are the seven problems I see most often on dental sites, with the fix for each.

1. Slow load times

Google's 2016 mobile research found that 53% of mobile visits are abandoned when a page takes longer than 3 seconds. Check your mobile score at PageSpeed Insights. Under 90 means some visitors leave before the page loads. The usual causes are huge photos and too many plugins, so start by compressing images and deleting plugins you do not use.

2. No online booking

A patient who finds you at 9 PM and can only call during business hours may book with the next practice. Put a booking or appointment request button in the top menu and near the top of the homepage, where a phone user can see it without scrolling.

3. Reviews that visitors never see

You may have 150 good reviews on Google while your website mentions none of them. Show your star rating and a few recent reviews on the homepage, with first names.

4. A poor phone experience

Check your site on your own phone, not on a shrunken desktop window. Text should be readable without zooming, buttons should be easy to tap with a thumb (44 to 48 pixels tall is the usual guideline from Apple and Google), and the form should be short.

5. Stock photos

Visitors can tell a stock photo from a real one. Spend one afternoon photographing your actual office, your team and your equipment. Well-lit phone photos of the real practice beat stock.

6. No sign of where you are

Put your city in the page titles and headings ("Family Dentist in San Antonio"), show your address and phone number at the top of every page in the same wording you use on Google, and embed a map on your contact page. If you serve more than one town, give each its own page with something specific to say about it. If you want to know where you stand, run the free audit.

7. A dated look

Stanford's Persuasive Technology Lab studied how people judge whether a website is credible (Fogg et al., 2002). The look of the site was the most common thing people mentioned, in 46% of their comments. An old design makes patients wonder whether the care is old too. Use plenty of white space, one or two colors, and one readable typeface.

What I do about these

Every site I build gets a booking button on each page, your reviews, real photos where you have them, and a phone-first layout. If the new site scores under 90 on Google PageSpeed for mobile, I rebuild it free. Sites start at $997 to set up and $79 a month, month to month with 30 days' notice, and you own the code. See the pricing or book a call.