Today, most people use mobile devices to search for something they need. This trend applies to the healthcare industry too.
Even Google has taken a mobile-first approach to gauging user engagement signals and website performance. Put simply, if your dental, surgical, or medical practice’s website is not built for browser and mobile visitors, you may miss out on a massive subset of potential customers.
While every business is unique, with differences often reflected in their online branding and marketing, there are several key tenets to effective medical mobile website design. When building or fine-tuning your online presence, it is important to keep these tenets in mind. Here are some tips for improving your mobile site’s user experience and boosting your conversion rates.
The biggest challenge in constructing a website that reads and functions well on mobile devices is accounting for the screen size. Handheld devices are significantly smaller than desktops or laptop computer monitors. As such, smaller font sizes may be unreadable on phones or tablets. Text that is perfectly formatted for browsers can also become indecipherable due to the unique dimensions of phone screens.
Fortunately, many website building platforms have tools for navigating this problem and simplifying the mobile design process. For example, rather than a menu bar containing several text-labeled tabs that might work well on a desktop platform, a medical website optimized for mobile can often benefit from “hamburger menus.” This refers to a small symbol, usually a group of three horizontal lines resembling a hamburger, that fits easily on all mobile screens.
These lists are highly customizable depending on the services and goals of the practice. A plastic surgery site might list surgical procedures under this symbol for mobile searchers to easily navigate, while a dental practice could feature entries for various oral concerns.
More advanced navigation strategies including the use of submenus that link to subtopics. This is particularly helpful with long-form SEO pages that are typical for competitive, high-priority practice areas.
Optimizing a medical website for easy mobile navigation should not mean sacrificing unique branding and design elements that distinguish a particular practice from competitors. For example, a practice’s desktop design that is built around actual patient photos and images for high-priority procedures should also incorporate those photos prominently into the mobile design strategy.
One way to achieve this is to build a dental, surgical, or medical website homepage around short descriptions about key practice areas, services, and sections, such as the before and after galleries, financing, and Reviews. These can be listed one after the other on a long-scrolling page. This provides mobile users quick and easily digestible information about what your practice could do for them and allows you to drive visitors to priority pages and sections of your site.
Beyond basic user interface design choices, the user experience for mobile site visitors should be built around conversions. Some suggestions include:
Utilizing a persistent branded banner that stays on the top or bottom of the page even when scrolling. This should include a touch-to-call phone number, as phone calls are the highest value type of lead.
Incorporating Live Chat and Text Message calls-to-action. This is particularly important for Millennial consumers that grew up with digital communication and prefer it over telephone calls.
Adding a “Contact Us” form at the bottom of every page so users can submit questions without having to make an additional click.
Ending every page with a closing “next step” paragraph with links. This could be a touch-to-call phone number, a link to the Contact Us page or Before & After Gallery, etc. Pages should not dead end and leave visitors to figure out what to do next.
There are both technical and aesthetic elements in optimizing your medical website for all platforms. Even if you cover all your bases in terms of mechanical user interface (UI) and user experience (UX), a website without visual appeal may not achieve the results you want.
Assistance from a qualified digital marketing agency is critical in constructing the best medical mobile website design for your needs. MedShark Digital has a long track record of helping dentists, plastic/cosmetic surgeons, and other medical professionals reach their marketing goals. Call us today for a consultation.