Based on a PracticeCare® podcast conversation, Hunter Davis on Getting More Patients From Your Website, with Hunter Davis, marketing and business coach for private practices.
Do practices really underrate how much their website matters?
Yes, constantly. Most practice owners rank their website somewhere around a business card or fresh flowers in the lobby.
Word of mouth, directory listings, referring physicians — every one of those roads still ends at your website before a patient calls. More people will look at your website than will ever meet you in person before they decide to reach out.
Would you let your waiting room sit half-lit with disheveled chairs and papers on the floor? That’s what a neglected website looks like to the hundreds of people checking you out online. Treat it like real property.
What’s the single biggest website mistake you see?
No clear next step for the prospective patient to take. Practices don’t want to seem salesy, so the way to contact them gets buried — a small “learn more” link, or a contact tab tucked at the bottom.
That’s the equivalent of hiding your front desk in a closet because you don’t want to seem pushy. It’s not salesy to make yourself easy to reach. It’s basic service.
Fix it with one big, obvious button: “Schedule an Appointment” or “Call Now.” Repeat it several times down the homepage, and keep it visible in the menu bar even as someone scrolls.
Should the homepage lead with the practice’s credentials and experience?
No. Patients land on your site thinking about themselves and their problem, not about you. Leading with years in practice or procedure counts skips past all of that.
State the problem you solve in plain language before you say anything else. An orthodontist with decades of experience only realized her headline should say “we fix crooked teeth” — not a description of orthodontics as a discipline.
Save your credentials for later. Someone who isn’t hungry doesn’t care that you’re a trained chef. Get them nodding that you understand their problem, then show them why you’re the one to fix it.
What’s wrong with the photos on most practice websites?
They decorate instead of communicate. Generic stock photography — smiling models who have nothing to do with the practice, a pond with ripples, a red puzzle piece clicking into place.
A patient looking at your site is shopping for one thing: help with their specific problem, the same way someone on Amazon searching for dish soap wants to see dish soap, not a field of daisies. Show your actual office and the real service you provide.
Why do too many fonts and colors hurt a website?
Too many fonts and colors are busy and hard to look at. It reads as disorganized, and disorganized reads as unprofessional. Two fonts, one or two colors, pulled straight from the practice logo, is enough.
What’s a three-step plan, and why should a website have one?
It’s a simple map of what happens after someone reaches out — schedule an appointment, come in for the visit, choose a treatment plan, for example. Most practices never think to spell this out because the process feels obvious to them.
It isn’t obvious to a first-time patient. Weight Watchers built an entire brand around this idea: download the app, count the points, lose the weight. It leaves out plenty of detail, but it makes the decision start to feel simple.
Put your three steps near the bottom of the homepage, right before another call to schedule. It turns “how does this even work” into a decision a patient can make in seconds.
What should be easy to find in the website menu?
Four things: who you are, what you treat, where you’re located, and what other patients say about you.
Label them the way a patient thinks, not the way a clinician does. “Modalities” and “Areas of Service” mean nothing to someone searching for help — call it “Services.” And if your reviews are strong, don’t bury them in a sub-menu that’s hard to find.
If a practice wants to fix their website, where should they start?
The headline. It’s the one change with the most leverage, and it doesn’t require a redesign.
Rewrite it to state the problem you solve or the outcome your patient is chasing — not your title, not your years of experience. Then test it: have someone reasonably sharp but unfamiliar with your practice read only that headline and tell you what they think you do. If they hesitate at all, rewrite it again.
A final note from Carl White
Your website isn’t one item on a long list of things you manage. It’s the first impression for more people than you’ll ever meet face to face, and most practices are letting it run half-lit, with the chairs disheveled. Of all of the online places your practice can be found, your website is also the only place you truly own vs. rent. Fix the headline, add the button, tell people what happens next. None of it requires a big budget. It requires treating your website like the front door it actually is.
ig budget. It requires treating your website like the front door it actually is.