Physical Medicine Website Design
Anatomy of a Great Physical Medical Website Design:
Physical Therapy, Chiropractors, etc.
An effective Physical Medicine Home Page is broken into multiple components. On the overall, the Home Page needs to immediately engage the visitor and quickly convey a level of professionalism to the patient with appropriate decorum relative to the medical specialty. The site must be visually interesting and the visitor must be able to quickly determine the website’s general navigation.
The Home Page, while only a single page of a multi-page website, is by far the most important page because it is the first introduction of the patient to your practice or group. The Home Page must convey an appropriate level of professionalism and decorum to the visitor, and the visitor needs to quickly ascertain the website’s navigation and assorted shortcuts to other pages within the website.
The Home Page is afforded about three (3) seconds to accomplish this task. Outside of visitors who access your website directly to schedule an appointment or use your patient portal, visitors from search engines are often comparing your group to other similar providers in your area. They have arrived via Google, Yahoo! or Bing, and they will move on to the next search result if they are not instantly impressed by your site and cannot understand your website’s navigation.
Engaging Your Visitors
Animation with motion is one of the best ways to engage a visitor on your Home Page. Because movement – especially movement at the edge of peripheral vision – grabs a visitor's attention, causing them to wait for about three seconds to determine what has happened on screen, and what is likely to then happen next. This pause is enough time to process the other two items of an effective Home Page.
Professionalism & Decorum are the Best Visuals
Three seconds is sufficient time for the visitor to determine if the website meets or exceeds their initial expectation of the group. The Home Page’s design demonstrates whether the practice is large or small, friendly and comfortable, or large and efficient. The personality of your group and your prospective audience should be considered when selecting a design theme.
Examples: The Home Page of a Physical Therapy website should attempt to demonstrate the therapists attending to patients as well as to showcase the facility. Stock photos should provide examples of patients using modern exercise equipment that is clean and sterile. Try and stay within the appropriate age group of your base and avoid photos of models who are extremely youthful or athletic unless they represent your typical patient. Color selections are often bright, primary colors such as green, red, yellow and blue.
Chiropractors should consider creating a website that demonstrates chiropractic procedures and techniques on the Home Page. Color combinations of light greys, and muted pink conveys comfort and help the patient to alleviate their pain and discomfort.
When considering stock photography, the most effective images are those of typical patients that you are likely to see. Photos that show a provider working with or attending to the typical patient are good choices. You can also use these throughout the website as well – they demonstrate concern, compassion and direct interaction with your patients.
Dr. Leonardo contains high-resolution banner images that can be on the animated section of your Home Page. You can also use photos of your own – images of the facilities, staff, etc. Dr. Leonardo has more than 1,000 different design themes, including 30 or more for physical medicine. By varying the Home Page banner images, you can customize your Dr. Leonardo website for a unique Home Page.
Menu & Shortcut Navigation – Easy to Understand
Your visitors need to instantly understand your menu system and determine any shortcuts that you have to specific pages within the website that you would like to steer patients towards. A site with educational depth – including clinical content, provider biographies, forms and accepted insurances, can be complicated to navigate. Therefore, establish a trail with multiple methods to explore the internal pages of the website. Use of icons and other similar graphics are helpful.
Dr. Leonardo websites are built with intuitive menus and shortcuts to online appointment scheduling, patient portals, and links to social media links websites. Menus and pages are editable for a custom presentation.
Internal Pages
Your Home Page should lead your visitors through the internal pages of your website. Encourage visitors to engage within a large area of the website, review provider biographies, and educate themselves on the various conditions, treatments and clinical procedures that interest them. First-time visitors are potentially 'vetting' the practice, so this level of engagement comes at the direct expense of other providers that the patient is reviewing as well.
Clinical Content
Detailed clinical content helps to achieve two important purposes:
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Search engines use content as their primary source of information.
It pays to remember that the primary purpose to a search engine is to answer questions by providing relevant information sources. When this is accomplished, visitors come back to use the search again for their next inquiry. And written content is not only the deepest source of information for search engines, but it is also the easiest to source, identify and obtain.
When your website contains significant clinical information and related terminology, a search engine considers it to be an authoritative source. This means details on health conditions you treat, treatment regimens, etc. Add information about your practice or group, biographical and curriculum vitae details about each of your providers and the ‘bots’ (robotic web crawlers) will have lots to use when indexing your website.
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Patients will look to your website when researching their personal health conditions.
Patients anticipate finding information on your website that explains their condition, or details their treatment regimens. This helps to make existing patients feel comfortable that you are their chosen healthcare provider.
Prospective patients are at your website in order to vet you as their potential provider. The best way to satisfy their concerns is to inform and educate them on the conditions you treat and the therapy regimens you offer and propose. Prospective patients then feel that they have come to the right provider.
Content can be difficult and time-consuming to write about. Dr. Leonardo features written content on more than 300 chiropractic and physical therapy conditions and treatments. In fact, we have information on 8,800+ healthcare topics. Written discussions will average 400 – 700 words each, and each discussion includes clinical illustrations and professional photography. Dr. Leonardo’s library contains 6,000+ images. Plus, our print-ready functionality with rich-text is your point-of-care information at your office examination room, and on your patient’s mobile device.
Online Appointment Scheduling
Online appointments are now becoming an expected feature to a healthcare practice’s website. By 2019, it is estimated that 64% of the U.S. population will use their provider’s website to schedule their appointments online, and close to one billion appointments will be booked this way every year [Accenture]. The message: expect that two-thirds of your patients will use your website to book their appointments with you.
It's important to keep this simple, since most people will use their smartphone to book these appointments. Just the patient’s name, telephone, email address, and appointment time. Reserve the questions about their insurance plans and medical history by using your confirmation notice to direct them back to your website to complete these items. Alternatively, if you have a Patient Portal you can direct them to that page on your website.
Dr. Leonardo's simple appointment interface collects:
- First and last name
- The primary and mobile telephone numbers
- Patient email address
- Preferred method of contact
- New or existing patient
- Reason for visiting
- Date, time and office location of the appointment
Dr. Leonardo automatically notifies your office of the appointment by email. Personal Health Information (PHI) is automatically encrypted using our SecureForms™ feature of our HIPAA-compliant servers.
Patient Portals
Without question, the best place for your Patient Portal is on your website. Patients can access information on their history directly through a page on your website, and referring providers can review your EHR notes for joint patients.
Dr. Leonardo supports more than 100 EHR systems with links to your Patient Portal via short-cuts from each page of your website.
Office Documents & Forms
Patient forms can be placed on your website as PDF files allowing patients to download and complete them before arriving for their appointment. Forms available as interactive PDF files can be completed online and then imported directly into your EHR software. Some Patient Portals also offer patient forms as part of the online registration process, so patients can be directed towards the portal to register prior to arrival at your facility.
Dr. Leonardo supports patient forms in Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word and other document formats.
Accepted Insurances
Patients will often attempt to match prospective providers with their insurance plan. Accordingly, it is important to keep this list up-to-date and accurate as it becomes associated with the healthcare providers and the practice/group.
Responsive Mobile Optimization
Search queries are now conducted on mobile devices more often than not. As a result, search engines give greater preference to mobile-optimized websites. In particular, responsive websites which adapt their appearance to multiple devices, are considered by search engines to provide a better user experience when using a smartphone. The speed to load factors too since smartphone users are less patient in waiting for their devices.
Dr. Leonardo websites are responsive and mobile-optimized. They adjust automatically to desktops, tablets and smartphones.
On-Page SEO & Digital Marketing Agencies
The Dr. Leonardo Content Management System (CMS) gives your practice the ability to edit the content on your website yourself. This includes access to On-Page SEO (Search Engine Optimization) features. With Dr. Leonardo, you can provide access to a third-party digital marketing agency for on-page SEO while keeping your existing D. Leonardo website.
Notices Within the Website Footer
Your Notice of Privacy Practices (NPP) is required to be posted on your website in accordance with HIPAA regulations. A webpage must exist for this purpose, or you may provide a link to a file that patients can download.
Dr. Leonardo includes a comprehensive NPP that you may use to distribute to patients as your written policy if you like. Dr. Leonardo websites also feature a Website Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
For more information on Dr. Leonardo PRACTICE-Sites, build yours today.
Your patients will love the ease and simplicity of scheduling appointments themselves at your website.
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Accenture predicts that by the end of 2019, 66 percent of US health systems will offer digital self-scheduling and 64 percent of patients will book appointments using digital tools. Nearly 38 percent of appointments will be self-scheduled—almost 986 million appointments—creating $3.2 billion in value.”