Creating a Web site is the single most important marketing tool you could and should have for your practice. It is no longer if you should have a Web site, but rather what you should put on your site. Web sites validate you as a “real” business.

Practices without Web sites are missing out on numerous opportunities to attract patients surfing on the Web in an effort to find a dentist. In addition, referrals from existing patients will often fall flat if the prospective patient goes to the Internet to find you and you are missing.

Now that you are moving forward and developing a practice Web site, here are 10 things we at Jameson believe you should consider when building your site:

10 Powerful Tips

1. Make the text “you” focused and action oriented instead of doctor oriented.

2. Use testimonials and photos of your own patients in lieu of stock photography.

3. Use non-retracted smile and portrait photos of your work.

4. Put your contact information on every page in an easy to find place.

5. Put photos of patients on the home page.

6. Place the doctor and team photos on the “Meet Your Team” page.

7. Showcase your practice with a photographic tour of your office. Create it so you can update it frequently.

8. Have a map to your location.

9. Develop the site so that it can be search engine optimized.

10. Have a tracking mechanism tied to your site so you can see the actual success of it.

Build, market, and track a great site so that you can take your practice to the next level! First focus on getting the site you want and need. Building an amazing site is an exciting experience and so rewarding when your patients rave about it. It will be even more rewarding when you see your new patient numbers and case acceptance rise because you have created the right message that you carry through your entire practice!

With over 5 years of experience as a web designer/developer, I’ve developed an intimate knowledge of web site “best practices”. Over the years, the most common mistake I see people make is thinking that simply having a web presence is enough. They take the “if you build it they will come” approach. Back in the 90′s that may have worked.

However, the game has changed dramatically since then – in terms of consumer demands, web technologies, and search engine algorithms. No longer can you launch a website and simply hope for the best. You need to constantly evolve your web offering with the changing consumer demands, web technologies and search algorithms to beat out your competition.

Certainly we can’t cover everything that you need to know about dominating your competition online, but I thought it would be a good idea to start with a post highlighting 5 quick, yet powerful tips for improving your existing website.

So, lets get to the tips, shall we?

1. Install Google Analytics

Do you have a counter at the bottom of your website pages? Get rid of it. Sure, it counts the number of visitors to your site. However, this is rarely a good thing. Not only are counters an eyesore, but often the numbers on the counter are embarrassingly low. How do you think that looks to your potential customers? Not good.

So, I recommend installing Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a very powerful and stealthy(unseen to visitors) web-based analytics package that tracks the number of unique visitors to your site, search terms visitors used to find your site, how long they were on your site, and much much more. Best of all, Google Analytics is FREE. If you’re only going to act on one of these tips today, make it this one.

Sign up for Google Analytics

2. Ditch The Flash Intros

If your website greets visitors with a Flash intro, get rid of it.

On its face, I can see why dentists like flash intros. After all, if done well, they can be stylish and captivating. Unfortunately, they’re also expensive, highly irritating, slow loading and scare visitors away. Just get rid of it.

3. Include a Contact Form on your “Contact” Page

Include a contact form on your contact page. The idea here is to make it as easy as possible for your visitors to contact you – accessibility is key. If you’re simply posting your e-mail address and forcing your visitors to e-mail you in order to make contact, you’re probably losing potential patients. Make it easy with a contact form.

There are many places on the web to find contact form scripts. I really like the contact forms available at Woofoo.com. They’re highly customizable, brandable, stylish, and easy to integrate into your site (simple cut n’ paste).

4. Feature Contact Information Prominently

Also important for accessibility is featuring your contact information prominently. I recommend posting your address and phone number(s) both at the top and bottom of each page. This ensures that no matter what part of a particular page your visitor is viewing, they’ll be able to see your contact information. Prominent contact information is also a good idea because it enhances your trust value in the eyes of your visitors.

5. Check for Broken Links

This may seem like a no-brainer, but many people neglect to check their site for broken links. Broken links are bad for a number of reasons – they leave your visitors frustrated and they’re frowned upon by search engines.

Thankfully, you don’t have to click through each link on your site to clean up your broken links. Instead, I use a free program called Xenu’s Link Sleuth. The program crawls your site looking for broken links. Once this process is complete, you will be given a report listing all of the broken links that the program encountered. You can then run down the list and fix or remove the broken links on your site.

Final Thoughts

These tips are by no means comprehensive. However, they’re quick, they’re actionable, and they’re powerful. Do you have disagree with any of my tips? Are you already doing these things on your site? Let us know in a comment below.