Thursday, October 4, 2012

The 5 Top Features That Make Highly Effective Chiropractic Websites

By Richard Liem


It's a well-established fact and something that I'm sure you'll agree with, that the modern method consumers form their first impression of business is through their website.A lot more people today now search for a business or details about an organization by Googling it and clicking onto their web site and if their web page is boring, plain, much like all the others and does not "WOW" them, they formulate a negative first opinion. Justified or not, this is just the way it is today.

This process is the same in relation to your clinic. Even if you have the best clinic across the world, if your website doesn't reflect that, your visitors won't see it and chances are they will not call your office.

Let's put this in perspective. If you're wishing to purchase a particular item, say an Armani suit or dress and you are standing at the end of a retail street where all the store fronts have a similar basic design, color scheme, look and feel. If this is the case, chances are you're not going to be in the position to distinguish which store sells the high end brand you're interested in and which store sells a lesser brand. But if the store had really attractive colors, a cool or elegant sign, pleasant lighting and maybe an employee standing outside of the door dressed to the nines with a big welcoming smile and ready to greet you, then chances are you will certainly go directly to that store and disregard others. Right?

Well that's precisely what online visitors will do when they are seeking a chiropractor. The problem is identical most chiropractic websites are all the same and the visitor experience is the same and so when individuals search on the internet, it's really a roll of the dice as to which chiropractor they will go to in their area.

But just just like the store example above, if you have a site that truly stands apart, delivers a WOW experience and offers the essential information for them to make their decision and motivates them to purchase, you can bet your online visitors will call your clinic and make a scheduled appointment.

And in order to set your clinic apart and also have a website that compels your website visitors get in touch with your office, it's important to wow them, provide what they're looking for in a website, and make contacting your clinic EXTREMELY easy (which is simply not by placing your contact number clearly in sight)!

So here are the 5 Essential Components to a Successful Chiropractic Website Design

1. Not Having Website Clutter- All too many chiropractors think that they must put the maximum amount of information as possible into their website. Thinking that the more info that is provided, the more informed their visitors will be and so, the more likely they will book and be a qualified candidate. Wrong.

The truth of the matter is "LESS IS MORE". Because consumers are so impatient and time limited, they only want to have their questions answered quickly so they make a decision. So, if there is excessive clutter and excessively information presented to your web visitors, they'll become overwhelmed and frustrated and will most likely to jump off your site - not make a buying decision - and not contacting your office to book a consultation.

2. Communicating with your clinic needs to be BEYOND easy - It goes far beyond just having your telephone number in a highly visible place on your site. Believe it or not, when it comes to online, telephone numbers are almost becoming pass. Live Chats have become becoming the more favored way of communicating to business (which is much more beneficial to your clinic!). The great thing with Live Chats on websites is that visitors will never be put on hold, never get a busy signal (the second main reason people hang up the phone and will call your competition) or being sent to voicemail (the top reason individuals will hang up and call your competitors). Furthermore, since more and more people are preferring to use their smart phones to do internet searches (instead of lap tops and desktop computers), the Live Chat will be even more appreciated!

Furthermore, a web site needs a fillable Patient Intake forms (not merely an online form that your visitors have to print, fills out then brings to your office). Your website must provide a patient intake form that your visitors can fill out while on your web site which can be emailed to your clinic once it has been completed with the press of a button.

Remember, when a visitor is on your site, you want to have it so that everything is available to them to book and make a commitment to your office. Once a visitor leaves your web site without making a commitment to you clinic, they're not as likely to book with your office. Thus, an Online Patient Scheduler is also vital to have. With an online patient scheduler, visitors can book their consults or treatments online themselves without calling your office. This is a phenomenal website component as the potential patient can avoid the back and forth with your receptionist when attempting to find a suitable time or the visitor being inconvenienced because they have to call back after checking their schedule.

3. Building Rapport With Your Visitors - It is this point that just about ALL websites neglect to do. Nearly all chiropractors feel that by throwing up a handful of pics of themselves with family and patients will indicate to the visitor that the doc is wonderful, warm and a skilled chiropractor. This just isn't true. Since virtually all chiropractors do this, any effectiveness this tactic may have had in the past is now gone and completely ineffective.

It is for this reason why Webinars (i.e. Live online seminars where doctors can lecture and interact with their online audience) have grown to be very popular in building rapport and driving massive numbers of new patients to their clinic. Dilemma is, there isn't any service whereby the Webinar features can be built into a chiropractor's website (except a Promodocs.com Chiropractic website - which has their chiropractic web templates built with the webinar feature). Having a webinar feature included in your site, you'll be able to promote it to every single visitor that comes to your site, and by always keeping your webinar attendees on your site, they'll more likely book an appointment.

The significance of holding Webinars is that visitors will bond with you, interact with you and have visitors get to know you from the comfort of their own home. This feature alone builds massive rapport and will provide you with more new patients than you ever thought possible.

4. Website Must Be Visually Stimulating - By this I don't mean having a lot of flashing lights and attention grabbing gimmicks. The website needs to be specifically designed to really make it uncluttered like in point #1, but also be designed and structured to ensure that it encourages and inspires website visitors to tour your website, refer their friends and family and contact your office on their first visit to your site.

5. Lead Capture and Auto-Responder - For those who don't know what this is, a Lead Capture is a mechanism on your site where visitors will voluntarily leave their email address and an Auto-Responder program is when your web site automatically sends newsletters in sequential order to these leads/visitors.

This really is extremely powerful in obtaining massive numbers of new patients to your clinic because keeping in constant contact with those visitors that haven't already booked, your office will be top of mind and you'll be the first clinic they contact whenever they need to see a chiropractor.

The most important mistake doctors make when they use auto-responders is they email their leads far too often! If leads are emailed more than every 3-4 weeks you will not only irritate them and fill their inbox, but they'll request they be removed from your subscriber list and you'll lose them forever as a potential new patient.

Hopefully it is clear why these 5 points are so critical in creating a highly successful chiropractic website and I know that you're probably proclaiming that this is going to cost you a fortune to implement (not forgetting the SEO (search engine marketing) costs that's involved to get your site ranked on the major search engines.

Well the good news is that there are companies online that you can pay to use their webinar service etc, however, you have to either pay monthly fees or pay anytime that you use them. Which, yes, this too is usually expensive.

However, at the risk of lowering the credibility of the significance of these 5 essential items by sounding sales pitchy, Promodocs as developed the most effective chiropractic websiteswhere all of these functions and so much more are already built into their chiropractic websites.

In fact, Promodocs has spent hundreds and hundreds of hours researching the triggers that motivate online individuals to take action and book consults and they have integrated ALL of these features into their websites to make them the most powerful chiropractic websites on the market.




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