Perfect Content Marketing For Chiropractic Websites
Last Updated: June 25, 2019
The design of your chiropractic website is critical. Understanding patient actions is a huge part of the process that most doctors forget about. As chiropractors, we are so concerned about telling patients about the services we offer, that we forget to ask the question: do they want to know about all the services? In most cases, patient are much more concerned about seeing your picture then they are about whatever services you might offer.
Education Focus or New Patient Focus?
When the first chiropractic websites were produced, they were focused on patient education. As chiropractors we all thought that websites were going to be the next patient education tool, but we were wrong. Patients were bored to death, and almost none of them read the content.
TIP 1: Is Your Website Design Professional or In Your Face?
When the first new patient generating chiropractic websites came out, they were very “in your face”. This obviously works, but is it the kind of impression that you want to leave on the people that know you in your community? Our team at Inception believes that you can get people to take action without making them feel like a child. Show them a professional website with a clear call to action, and you can accomplish the same goal.
TIP 2: Does Your Website Need to Have Video?
Video marketing is becoming more and more important every day, but does your website have to contain videos? Video is great to have on your website, but from experience it’s not absolutely necessary. In fact, I would say that having a video on your homepage should only be done if the video is of very high quality. Shooting a dark, low quality video in your office, and displaying it on the top of your website, is not the best option.
On the topic of videos, I do believe that it is very good to have patient testimonial videos. Our clients that have a number of chiropractic testimonial videos on their website do very well with them. The videos are not expected to be of high quality, and it’s a great way to show potential new patients what others are saying about you.
TIP 3: Mobile Chiropractic Websites
There has been a great deal of buzz lately about mobile chiropractic websites. There are a number of companies running around telling small business owners that they are losing clients because they don’t have a mobile friendly website. Is this really true?
To start this conversation we first have to talk about reality. Every modern website works on a mobile phone in some way. Some chiropractic websites display in a true mobile version while others display in responsive format.
You have to ask yourself this question: If you are trying to learn about a new business, would you want to see their full website on your smart phone or just a fraction of it in a mobile version? I for one want to see the full website. Smart phones are so impressive today that the need for condensed mobile version websites really doesn’t exist.
All of our websites at Inception have a responsive design. What this means is that the full page is available, but it changes its shape to fit on the device it’s being displayed on.
TIP 4: Make Your Homepage Clean & Focused
Most chiropractic websites are loaded with mountains of information on the homepage. Do a test for yourself. Start clicking on a bunch of different websites from chiropractors in your city, and see what happens to you. Do you scan the whole page and read all the content, or do you look at the one thing that stands out the most? I know that I look at the one thing that stands out the most, and I ignore the rest.
I believe very strongly that potential new patients function in the same way. They spend about 5 seconds looking at your website, and if they don’t take action in that period of time they will leave. They might come back to you, but why take that chance? If your website is set up to be neat, clean, and focused on a good call to action you will have more success.
TIP 5: Content Management Systems Work Best
When we start talking about website design platforms, most people have no idea what we are talking about, but if you’ve heard of WordPress then you know a little bit about this topic. In the past, most web designers built websites from scratch by hand coding. Today the majority of websites are built with content management systems. You can think of content management systems like building blocks. Designers all over the world create modules that can be plugged into CMS systems like WordPress or Joomla. Content management systems are typically much easier to manage and they also allow you as a doctor to be able to login to make adjustments if you choose to.
At Inception Chiropractic Websites, we are personally big fans of using WordPress as a content management system for our doctors. WordPress allows us to offer more cutting edge designs to our clients. We also do not expect our clients to have to work on their own site. We are here to make changes for you within minutes of being asked to do so.
TIP 6: Choose the Right Website Cost
So how much should you be paying for a chiropractic website? Is a $49 website the same as a $250 website? The hard thing for most doctors is that they don’t have enough experience in this area to know what they are paying for or getting. My personal opinion is that you should not be spending above $500 per month on a website, and if you are paying less than $200 you’re probably not getting the service you think you are.
I put together this video to give you a bit more information about website cost:
TIP 7: Pay Attention to Your Content
The content of your chiropractic website is the strength of your website. When Google comes to look at your page, they make assessments of hundreds of things. They do their best to evaluate your content against the rest of the competition.
The first thing that you want to look at is how specific your content is. If you want to rank for specific terms in a Google search then you need to have well-written content about that topic. Most websites have little to no content. The length of your page is important. A well-written, long article will give you much more credibility then one or two paragraphs. At Inception we handle this for our clients.
