What Your Outdated Dental Website is Telling Patients?
In this fast-changing world, the Internet plays a significant role. Any people in need of teeth treatment will first search on the Internet and then make an informed decision. The first thing a patient will observe while searching for their dental requirements is the dentist’s website. Therefore, you must keep your site up to the mark and user-friendly.
With the constant changes in technology and design, your website might die if not updated. Unfortunately, one website’s design and applications have only three to five years of shelf life. Thus, you need to know the signs of outdated website design and reasons to update the dental site. First, let’s begin with the causes of not redesigning your site.
Website Perils For Outdated Dental Website
Not interactive: The goal of a website is to get visitors to take action. If they can’t contact you, make an appointment, or have a conversation, your website has the capability of engaging many new patients.
Too promotional: Too many pop-ups and offers can worsen your first impression. Most people visit websites to meet their needs and don’t get distracted by too much self-promotion.
Broken links: One of the most significant restrictions to visitors to any website is a 404 error: Page not found messages and other mistakes throughout the site. The unbalanced dental clinic website limits the number of visitors who turn to new patients. Thus, scan your site with one of many free online resources to identify broken links.
Dated formatting: Pages that contain vast blocks of text move visitors. It would help if you had easy-to-scan text that attracts your readers to your content.
Date-sensitive content: Events, promotions, and other content related to past events indicate to the patient that you are not maintaining a website. Therefore, set calendar reminders when adding date-sensitive content to your site.
To know more about website designing, read our blog on 6 Essentials Of A Great Dental Website Design
Reasons To Update Your Dental Website
1. Out-of-date Aesthetics Can Be a Serious Issue
On average, users visit 89 websites in a month. It’s over a thousand a year! Do you think potential patients are unaware of the outdated design? The old website’s design may not reflect your clinical skills best. If you are not maintaining your website, what else are you can do? This is a question that arises in the mind of your website visitors.
Websites often need to be redesigned to get visitors’ attention, especially in a highly competitive marketplace. If you do not update it, your patients might jump to another site of your competitors.
Features To Consider While Updating Your Website:
- Has a modern feel
- Includes fascinating photos
- Less text-heavy
- Easy to navigate
It is also essential to understand the more technological innovations of websites—for example, coding. Innovation has moved from Flash technology to HTML5. This is very important in the mobile space as device vendors choose HTML5 in the future.
For creating interactive web applications such as websites, movies, and games, Flash, i.e., software technology, is considered. Using Flash instead of HTML5 can prevent potential patients who are trying to access a website on their mobile devices from accessing the website. However, it has various versions and security flaws, which can cause problems on desktop computers.
User Behaviour Is Constantly Evolving
As important as the overall aesthetics of your website is whether your website appeals to modern users. People’s Internet use differs greatly from how they used it just a few years ago.
For example, social media has shortened attention. Twitter limits text posts to 140 characters. Updating your Facebook post is often longer. People used to scroll through their Twitter and Facebook feeds all day long.
Due to the reduced attention span, the format of web pages has changed. The days when visitors read through complicated pages filled with endless blocks of text are gone. Instead, the page should look like this:-
- Use short paragraphs and headings to improve readability
- Distribute text using at least one image
- Have unique content that shows the personality of your practice
Another key element of modern design today is mobile compatibility. If the website is not mobile-friendly, the user experience with smartphones and tablets will be severely limited (over 50% of web searches are currently done on mobile). Therefore, your website must respond to all your devices. Otherwise, you will be considered backwards and lose potential patients.
You only have a few seconds to get the visitor’s attention. If you are late, the potential patient will sail to one of your competitors. Therefore, you must keep visitors on your site long enough to convince them to pick up the phone.
Final Words
If your website is over five years old, considering the above factors while updating the website will help you gain maximum patients. Else, you can hire the top agency providing digital marketing for dentists like One Stop Dental Marketing to get a well-designed website. For more information, contact us at 1300 867 699.
