With the prominence of internet use in consumers’ lives, healthcare providers today are slowly realizing the importance of establishing their place in the digital world. To achieve that, one of the necessary steps you need to take is to build your own healthcare website. That said, there is more to creating an engaging healthcare website design that meets the eye.
To help you create the most effective online page for your practice’s needs and goals, here are a few principles to remember that can improve your current website plans.
Easy Navigation, Simple Structure, and Clean Design
The website is your company’s face online. Thus, you need to make sure that it looks and works its best. As a visual medium, make sure that all page elements match in balance and all needed information is properly labeled and categorized. Spruce up your site by using a variety of materials, such as high-quality photographs, videos, infographics, and patient testimonials. The latter, in particular, is substantially helpful in gaining the trust of potential customers and establishing credibility for your practice.
Another hallmark of a good website is that it’s easy to navigate. While creating a well-structured site sounds easy enough, it requires a lot of time, skill, and planning. Some of the things you need to consider when structuring a website include choosing categories for headers, grouping related information, and placing these elements on the website. People navigate items intuitively, so if your website visitor can find items easily without third-party help, it means that your website has an easy navigational structure.
Break Down Big Sections and Complex Ideas
Face it: big blocks of texts are daunting. Today’s consumers want everything fast, including information. When they see long lines of text, they are less likely to read it. Hence, you need to break down these blocks into shorter paragraphs to make them more visually digestible.
This applies to content as well. The healthcare industry is notorious for using highly technical words that only those in the same field can understand. However, keep in mind that you are reaching out to people who don’t necessarily have a medical background. To clearly relay information, break down these complex words and ideas and explain them simply and clearly in a way that everyone can relate to and understand.
Abide by ADA Guidelines
ADA is short for the American with Disabilities Act. It is a civil rights law that aims to protect people with disabilities from discrimination. While its guidelines used to only cover public access to various facilities, it released website-specific rules in 2010. These rules have set a minimum standard of accessibility for websites, which can lead to lawsuits when not met.
There are several parameters a website needs to follow to become ADA compliant, but here are some key points to remember while designing a website:
- Legibility — Pick your fonts, their sizes, and colors carefully to make sure they are legible enough for visually-impaired people.
- Images — Individuals who have seeing disabilities use screen readers and other text-to-speech software to navigate websites. Since images can’t be read, these programs rely on the images metatext to describe them accurately.
- Subtitles — All video content should have subtitles for hearing-impaired individuals.
- Keyboard navigation — Some motor-impaired people cannot use mouses or keyboards. Thus, you need to make sure that the site can be navigated through keyboard control.
Improve Search Functionality
Whether it’s a particular service, item, or information, people click on websites because they’re looking for something. For visitors seeking healthcare services, create a better user experience for them by ensuring that your search bar is functioning well.
Some of the ways you can improve your site’s search functionality include:
- Putting the search bar on every page
- Highlighting the keywords used in the search
- Adding filters to narrow down searches
By improving the website’s search functionality and leading searchers to the relevant content, people are more likely to come back and look at you as a reliable healthcare provider.
Prioritize Mobile-Friendliness
Compared to a decade ago, more and more people are using their mobile phones to conduct searches online. According to Broadband Search, mobile traffic has increased by 222 percent within the past ten years, and around 52 percent of web traffic today comes from mobile phones.
Clearly, healthcare companies can no longer ignore the need to use a mobile-friendly design for their websites. By incorporating this feature, you can ensure that visitors accessing your online page will have an easy time navigating your website, thus elevating user experience and more particularly, the site’s search engine ranking.
Creating a healthcare website is far from easy. You need to write engaging and reliable content for your readers, stay on top of health-related news and guidelines, and reach out to prospective patients at the same time. If you need help on making your online website, there are healthcare marketing agencies you can partner with to bolster your digital repertoire. Do your research, put in the work, and you will have an attractive and welcome website for people seeking healthcare.