Five Important Things Your Dental Website Should Technically Have

Looks aren’t everything, especially when it comes to dental web design.

Hi, I’m Xaña Winans, Founder and CEO of Golden Proportions Marketing, one of the largest and most experienced dental marketing agencies in the country.

It’s nice to have a great looking website, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have a great performing website. Just like your office needs to be built on a solid foundation, your website needs to have the proper technology supporting it if you want it to be an effective marketing tool.

Here are five really important things your dental site should have…

Reliable hosting

Quality is more important than cost when selecting a hosting provider. The Godaddy’s of the world will save you a few dollars, but will cost you in terms of reliability and, believe it or not, search engine rankings. If your site is living on the same server as online pharmaceutical companies, you can bet Google will take that into consideration when determining your search rank. Your parents would have called it “guilt by association,” Google just calls it “guilty!”

Dependable security

If your dental website uses online forms, you need to protect patient data. (If you don’t believe me, ask your HIPAA consultant.) To do that, you’ll need to make sure your site is set up with an SSL certificate to keep data encrypted. If you want another reason to have a secure website, Google will give you a ranking boost for having an SSL certificate installed.

Functional platform

There are a number of DIY dental website templates out there, but none of them are really a good solution. The drag and drop design they offer makes child’s play of web design, but they also often look like a 9-year-old did it. The bloated code that makes those sites work also tends to result in slow speeds and limited dental SEO marketing potential. If you want a more reliable option, consider WordPress, which is one of the most popular platforms in use today.

Flexible integrations

Today, everybody wants to be able to do everything online, so you’d better be ready to accommodate them. If you offer appointment scheduling, health history form completion, bill payment, or virtual visits through third party software, make sure your dental website easily connects with them so your systems work smoothly and your patients enjoy a seamless online experience.

Detailed analytics

If you invest in a website, you’ll certainly want to know how well it’s performing. You can use Google Analytics to report on a wide variety of web traffic statistics. That’s free, but to really keep an eye on your dental website marketing, you might want to invest in a call tracking solution like Smart Market Dental to link to both your website and your patient management software.

Thanks for watching!