Are you in the market for a new or updated website for your medical practice? As you are no doubt aware, your online presence is critical to your ongoing success. When you’re marketing yourself online, you need an integrative approach across all the major web-based outlets. In the end, however, your primary objective is to get people to your website to sign up, schedule a booking or contact you.
Part of the challenge you’ll face in your website development relates directly to all the various aspects you need to focus on. This holds especially true within the medical field where privacy and confidentiality are critical.
Your site must deliver a usable, visually appealing glimpse of your practice which makes it easy for both current and prospective patients to learn about what you offer – and how to contact you. Additionally, your site may also need additional components such as a patient portal, automatic scheduling system, connection to your office’s internal database, a before and after gallery and more.
Have a look at some of the most important pieces of the website puzzle listed below. That way, you can better understand exactly what to expect when you’re getting your own website project underway.
Front-End Development
Front-end development relates to everything your visitors are going to see when they navigate to your site.
Think of your site’s front-end like you would any other customer-facing area of your practice. If you had a waiting room that was disorganised and non-functional, how do you think your first-time patients would feel about what you’re offering them? This is the same principle that you should adhere to within the design and usability of your site.
Your site should make the following aspects easy to see and access for visitors:
Services & Specialities
Contact Information
Sign Up or Appointment Booking Form
Back-End Development
Back-end development refers to all the nuts and bolts that make your site function properly. This typically includes the website code to display your page properly across multiple platforms. It also includes integration with databases, linking to your website hosts, and other technical elements to your site’s overall operation.
Whether or not you’re tech-savvy, you need to have access to the back-end of your site. That way, you can quickly address problems, issues or required updates/changes as necessary.
Database Connections to Your Patient Bookings
Speaking of back-end development, database integration may also be a requirement you’ll need to address for your website.
Will your site have a patient platform for easy sign-up for appointments? Do you want to include patient accounts with other information such as billing addresses?
If you decide to go down this route, remember that security is a huge part of this process. You want to make sure that all patient data is secure throughout your website and databases.
WordPress Integration
For blogging and other regular content posts, integrating your site with a WordPress account is another important piece of the website puzzle. WordPress offers a simple way for people to quickly create and post blog-based content. The variety of themes and customisation options make it easy to find (or create) a style that complements your primary website.
Producing ongoing blog content is one of the best ways a medical professional can build and maintain online authority. You can drive new and interested readers from your blog to your site – which will help all your online content rank better. Even better, a strong blogging effort frequently yields higher conversions from interested readers into new patients.
Joomla!, Squarespace & Other Web Platforms
For medical professionals ready to take on the task of their own website development, the good news is that they have many options to simplify the process. Platforms such as Joomla! and Squarespace provide high quality web design templates that can be quickly secured and deployed. These options are customisable and user-friendly without the need for complex technical knowledge or programming proficiency.
Joomla! has earned its stripes by delivering a free and open source platform for a wide variety of website development needs. The community behind this platform extends to practically every industry and requirement – including medical. That means that you can likely find every component you’ll need to build a highly functional website with everything you need.
For those looking for a slightly more integrated approach, Squarespace is another option which can yield high quality website results. Squarespace provides packages which include components such as website hosting for an easier all-in-one solution. And the platform’s simplified development process yields well-designed sites without any technical knowledge.
Putting the Pieces Together with The Gaswerx
Website development for medical professionals carries a significant amount of effort to achieve success. Medical professionals need to worry about a wide spectrum of aspects to develop and deploy a website that achieves all their objectives. From a patient-intuitive design to a high degree of security and integration, your website brings together every element of your practice.
The burning question you should ask yourself is simple: are you prepared to handle this task? With this number of components to ensure successful website management, you need to work with professionals who can deliver results. And this is precisely where The Gaswerx can help.
We offer comprehensive website development, management, hosting and marketing. Our team brings years of experience helping countless professionals in the medical field. We understand all the complexities this area holds for you, and we can bring you the results you need to maintain security, usability and marketing success.
Contact us The Gaswerx today, to learn about our web development, hosting and management packages. We will manage the ‘heavy lifting’ for your website. That way, you won’t have to divert your attention from the high quality care you provide your patients every day.