Top 5 Reasons Why You Should Have a Great Website for Your Practice

In this day and age of internet browsing and online buying, having a website is now a business necessity. A compelling reason is that one cannot simply ignore the growing 180 million Americans who use the internet at least once a month. Recent statistics show that more than 80 percent of Americans use the Internet to search for health information, out of which 54 percent specifically look for healthcare providers. It is believed that there's over 11 million internet searches for dentists every month on average.

1. It's Business 24/7

Your office operates during usual business days and hours of Monday to Friday, 9 am to 5 pm. However, your website is your 24/7 hour office front. With current and prospective dental patients leading busy lives, having the ability to schedule appointments, submit questions and learn more about your practice online extends convenience to patients, as well as your office staff.

2. It’s Your Online Brochure and Referral Program

Printed marketing material takes time and money to maintain, not to mention its impact on our environment. A website, on the other hand, takes little time to design, build and manage. In addition, you can integrate reviews, testimonials and social media sites like Google Places, Yelp, Facebook and Twitter, allowing prospective patients to read what current patients are saying about your practice.

3. Your Extended Waiting Room

The same efforts and thoughtfulness you put into your dental office design can be extended to your website with significantly less effort. The design and function of your website should inspire the same confidence in you as it does when patients walk into your waiting room. Thinking of your website as your digital dental office is especially important when attracting new patients.

4. Customer Service

Information availability can have a significant impact on patients’ likelihood to visit a particular practice. One of the easiest ways to extend excellent customer service is to answer relevant questions before they are asked, and there is no better vehicle for this than your website!

Keeping your practice’s website content current and relevant educates the public about your practice, projects a culture of transparency and delivers the information your patients are most likely to require – saving both patients and your office staff a phone call.

5.  Gather Information and Generating Leads

A website that is properly optimized with Searching Engine Optimization (SEO) ensures you achieve the highest possible rankings when prospective patients perform online searches.

About the Author. Andrew Esphahani is Solution21's go-to guy for everything SEO and AdWords. Solution21 takes the guesswork out of website production for dental practices. We help create websites for dentists, surgeons and medical professionals. Solution21 is the only solutions provider in the market that offers cost-effective turnkey website solutions.