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I will probably sharpen up the SEO power of the site so it helps replace her need for a yellow pages ad, but what type of content and pages do you create for a site like this?
I have never done a site for this industry and profession before so I would love some ideas from others who have of how to make a useful web site for a physician that is unfortunately fairly common in any city.
Most likely, she'll be leaning towards a yellow page ad/brochure type of site.
If she actually wants to spend some time writing some content, more of a blog style would be better.
[edited by: LifeinAsia at 10:23 pm (utc) on Oct. 2, 2008]
It all comes down to what does she want to accomplish with her site? (And chances are, she may have no clue what she wants to accomplish with it. She just knows that she "needs" a web site.)
I would completely agree with that. Maybe a better question to ask is what kinds of things will she need to accomplish? Short of just letting people know she is there and that she is a family practitioner I am not sure what other types of things she would need to accomplish.
I am trying to avoid simply suggesting the brochure-ware site to her as I think those are largely useless in most businesses, but I doubt she has the time or willingness to create an informational type site, especially with so many others available like WebMD not to mention all the others.
What about a calendar? I'd love it if I could set up an appointment with my doctor a website; or at least know when he/she might be available so I can plan accordingly before I call to schedule...and not end up shuffling papers trying to determine when I can show up and wait 45 minutes -- what about a "wait calculator"? Warnings or advice on
I think she could use a website to improve her service to existing patients -- word of mouth advertising is, at least in my understanding, how many physicians get new patients (second to referrals?). If you can add value for her current patients, that would be a really good use of a website.
I've also heard of doctors offering web diagnoses -- a kind of write in and describe your symptoms for non-emergency illnesses to minimize patient wait times. You would have to be very, very, very careful with this, and I have no idea about any laws, regulations, ethics problems etc. on this sort of activity. Just that I recall reading about it a year or two ago. Maybe she has other services which could be offered over the web; things she would have to do anyway that the web could help her improve her and her staff's productivity and patient satisfaction.
As others have pointed out, it's really about what she wants from the web site. I can think of three possibilities off the top of my head.
1) She wants to attract more patients.
If this is the case, then she needs to sell herself and her practice. What type of family care does she offer - pediatric to geriatric? Are her office hours better than others (evenings or weekends)? If she's young, does she want to push that she's full of energy and ideas, or if she's older does she want to push the experience angle? Is she part of a practice or on her own?
If attracting more patients is the goal, what does she do with the web site once her patient list is full and she really can't accept any new patients?
2) She wants to pass information to her patients.
She want the ability to send information along the lines of "this bug is going around and this is what you do if you get it." Perhaps notification when flu shots are available, or if you get the flu, when you should see the doctor.
Maybe she wants something even more aggressive: how to deal with arthritis, treatment for sprains, what skin cancer looks like.
The problem with all of this is that someone has to write this content (and doctors are incredibly busy) and a lot of that information is already available on the web, but probably not in a place convenient for her patients.
3) She wants her patients to be able to contact her.
Personally, I think this is a minefield, although I'd love to e-mail my doctor a photo of the bruise on the back on my leg and ask him if it's healing well. :)
If this is the case, you need a contact form or other types of back and forth communication. And the doctor better block out a lot of time to handle what will eventually be a deluge of e-mail.
and a lot of that information is already available on the web, but probably not in a place convenient for her patients.
Just link to it, then. No need to create content; just show her how to update a links page.
And the doctor better block out a lot of time to handle what will eventually be a deluge of e-mail.
A nurse could handle most of the messages on the doctor's behalf; though a disclaimer written by a good lawyer would be necessary for any message, no matter how benign the subject matter. The biggest hurdle would probably be insurance...I'd ask her malpractice provider about it before anything else.
I'd also only do it for patients on a follow-up basis; then she is possibly cutting her workload instead of increasing it.
I like Nerd's idea about the calendar, I would like for my doc to have one.
I thought about this as well, but the problem is most doctors have practice management software in their offices these days that track patient info, calendar, appointments, billing info, etc. interfacing a web calendar with that software would prove very difficult if not impossible, but you would almost have to do that to insure that the office calendar and web calendar don't get out of sync with each other.
Steakaphagus, great suggestions, thank you.
Why dont you give her a blog where she can discuss some of the illness doing the rounds like in winter the common cold , or measels or something like that.or perhaps give it a theme like every week shes got a different illness.1
Another idea is for live support (you can get this for free) where she is availble to chat to clients perhaps who dont wanna come in ... i dont know how practicle this is .
Another way is to specialise in a certain illness so that she could perhaps specilise in diabetes and therefore get clients from the area which have that illness .
Perhaps she could add her other services like botox or home visits or something.
There some nice web2.0 sites out there which have good graphs ect for illness and how a patient is progressing ... maybe something like that ...although that will be expensive
Maybe she could partner up with a gym and do a health programme or a weigh less programme same as with organic food .
well theres my 2 cents.
Further you need to give the user a reason to visit again for ex:
Seasonal tips, vaccination etc..
A glossary of med terms
And for kids we made a bunch of quizzes and “homemade” illustration to d-load and color with crayon or whatever
The idea is to think about a range of offerings that will make a patient visiting again
Maybe this will give you some more ideas.
I decided that I would search for one closer to work than to home since most offices seem to be open close to business hours which wouldn't give me time to go home and then go to their office.
The obvious first place to look was a plain old google search for "dentist in mycity". This brought up a local map and then I tweaked the search to show dentists close to work. In the pop-up bubble, some of them had reviews and some didn't. In the end, I only looked at the ones that had reviews and then went with the one that I thought had the most positive reviews.
I was very pleased with my choice and will be giving the dentist a review of my own.
So one of the obvious things you can do is to look at competitors in the area and find out what site google is using to get their reviews [when it says "12 reviews" on the map bubble]. Then e-mail the people that are the "happiest" clients and send them a link to the review site asking if they'd write a review. Maybe give them some kind of $5 gift card or token of appreciation if they print out their review and bring it in on the next visit.
