A stale website is never a good thing in any industry, but this is even more so in the extremely competitive healthcare industry. A well-crafted, engaging website will provide a better overall experience for the user and will also reduce your organization’s marketing costs by a considerable amount. Because of this, and the many other advantages of a well-designed website, your organization needs to update and improve its site. The following are seven aspects to consider when revamping a healthcare website.
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1. Make Your Healthcare Website User-friendly
Failing to make a website user-friendly is one of the easiest ways to create a negative user experience. Luckily, it is very easy to make a site user-friendly: You just need to set rules and follow them. Avoid anything that could turn a visitor away such as excessive advertising, poorly managed portals or lack of essential features such as a contact form or another way for visitors to get in touch. Many health care websites add a directory for physicians or key staff to make finding information easier, enhancing the user experience. Being user-friendly is just as much about not making negative decisions as it is about making positive ones. Making the website user-friendly and promoting customer support are two of the most meaningful ways to improve your healthcare website.
2. Maintain a Theme
One of the most important aspects of design is the idea of cohesion — that every piece of whatever you are creating should tie in together to become part of a larger whole. This idea is especially true in web design. Start by creating a common theme for your site. This theme can be anything from a set color palette to a layout of elements. From menus to buttons to text and multimedia elements, all the items of your website should tie together nicely. This means you should avoid issues such as clashing colors or shapes that don’t belong together.
3. Improve the Layout
This is an important step for updating your healthcare website. A well-laid-out site will improve the overall user experience. Improving the layout of your website can include anything from consolidating options under one common hub to removing nested portals so that users have to click less to get where they’re trying to go. Another common layout issue is making certain site elements too small while emphasizing a less important aspect of the site. Whatever issues your layout may be facing, resolving them will go a long way in improving your website.
4. Modernize the Design
Many older corporations still have websites that look exactly how they did when the internet first rose to popularity. However, any organization looking to maintain a website that appeals to all visitors needs to ensure its website design is modern and the site contents display well regardless of the electronic device visitors use to access the site. Researching modern web design can help your organization lay out a successful site that you can use for many years to come. In addition to this, a modern website is easier to update and maintain in the future.
5. Consider Hiring a Web Development Firm
Many organizations prefer to do their web design in-house or use standardized third-party platforms to make their website. Both of these practices have some advantages, such as ease of control or reliability, but in many cases, it is better to hire a professional web developer. Professional web development firms have the distinct advantage of being able to create entirely custom, unique websites. They can also improve your healthcare website in other ways that a standard platform or an in-house developer cannot. The benefits of hiring a professional website development company generally outweigh those of other options.
6. Ensure Your Healthcare Website is as Functional as Possible
Your users will appreciate a functional website. However, this goes beyond having a website that simply “works.” It also means that your site should have added features and functionality that current and potential users can appreciate. Adding specialized features to your site can also lessen the costs for the other departments in your organization. For example, allowing customers to access records and make appointments digitally will cut back on the operating costs of other departments. These are only a couple of the measures you can take to streamline the customer experience and improve and update your healthcare website.
7. Make Incremental Changes
When you plan to update your healthcare website, consider its current users. The revised website should remain familiar to them. A completely overhauled site can scare off your existing user base. Because of this, you may want to make changes incrementally over time, rather than creating a new site and possibly alienating your clientele. Finding a balance between updating your healthcare website and completely replacing it will go a long way in keeping your customers happy, and is less expensive overall than completely replacing your old platform.
It is very important to your success as a marketing manager to maintain, update and improve your healthcare website. The healthcare industry is competitive and constantly evolving. A well-designed healthcare website can serve as a useful tool and landing page for both maintaining your current user base and for attracting new customers. Because of this, begin taking measures to overhaul your website today.