In today’s wired world, dental prospects overwhelmingly begin their search for dentist online. Even if a prospect receives a word-of-mouth referral, she or he will almost certainly go online to read about the dentist and the practice, and to check out the reviews and testimonials.
However: if your website doesn’t deliver a seamless user experience; doesn’t provide and emphasize the solutions to prospects’ problems; and doesn’t give them compelling reasons to choose you instead of another dentist, they’ll leave and they won’t return. In almost all markets, prospects are spoiled for choice these days when it comes to dentists.
The Bare Minimum
As a group, dentists tend have a “fire-and-forget” mentality when it comes to their websites. The thing was a pain to get working in the first place, and everybody breathed a sigh of relief when the website was finally done.
Your website may not have evolved since it went live, but the internet is continually evolving.
Mobile Search
Searches from mobile devices overtook desktop searches in 2015, and the gap has continued to widen. If your website isn’t mobile-compatible, it won’t load quickly or display properly. Site navigation may be compromised or difficult to use.
Mobile compatibility requires much more than scaling down your current site. Handheld devices have different screen sizes, resolution capabilities, and processing speeds. Large graphics and pictures that look great on a desktop computer will cause the site to load slowly on a mobile device, and they may cover part of the text.
Your page copy may be easy to read on a large screen, but require extensive scrolling on a mobile device. That’s the kiss of death for today’s time-pressured and impatient dental prospects.
If your website hasn’t been updated in the last three years or so; and if it hasn’t been made fully mobile-compatible, you’re losing a lot of new patients.
Site Content
Look at a dozen different dental websites, and you’ll discover a shocking similarity. The content of those sites is all about them. That’s known as the “we-we” problem.
- We graduated from this dental school. (Your prospects can’t tell the difference between one school and another.)
- We have this post-doc training from this institution. (Your prospects won’t bother to check that program out.)
- We have this experience, we have this continuing education, ad nauseum. (Dentists today are assumed to be competent.)
- We do these procedures to treat these problems. (So do at least a dozen other dentists in your market.)
This might come as a shock, but your prospects don’t care about you. They care about finding solutions to their dental problems. They want to smile confidently, eat the foods they love without pain, and feel good about themselves again. And they want the dentist they choose to be likeable, relatable, and trustworthy.
Your website has to convince them that you’re the only logical choice to solve their dental problems. If it’s just like all the other dentists’ sites, the only reason to choose is price and availability.
You Can’t Afford To Have a “Point Of No Return” Website
You’re probably very busy these days. Most dentists report being overwhelmed with patients, most of whom are routine cleanings, exams, and drill-and-fills. They’re working too hard for too long for too little in return. And forget about taking time away from the practice.
If your website needs modernizing to make you competitive, consider choosing a provider who will make you more than competitive.
SmartBox provides a completely new, fully updated dental website as part of our industry-leading Patient Attraction System
. We drive the patients our dentists want to their website – patients who aren’t price-driven or insurance-driven.
SmartBox dentists can work less, earn more, and enjoy life again.
If that sounds like something you want, here’s your next step. Reserve your complimentary, no-obligation Roadmap call. Invest about the same amount of time it takes you to place a single crown or an implant to discover what’s possible for your practice.
Following the call, you’ll receive your Roadmap, a completely customized guide to your practice’s future. Use it however you like; there’s no obligation of any kind.
Your website can change: from the point of no return, to the gateway that gets you the better dental patients you want.