The REAL Cost of Building and Maintaining a Commercial Website

Having a website can be a wonderful experience. I have experienced the joy of owning and operating a brilliant website built and hosted by a genius. I have also experienced the misery of owning a lousy website hosted by notorious scammers. So I have seen websites from both ends of the spectrum.

This article is to apprise everybody of the costs associated with building and operating a commercial website. There are millions of web-surfers who seem to believe that everything they see on a website should be available free of charge. This will set the record straight so these people get some appreciation of the costs involved to bring information to them. (Note: The rates will vary from provider to provider).

First, a distinction – there are two basic types of websites:

  1. Personal – mum and dad type sites – several pages of “family” style information
  2. Commercial – business sites – from one page “sales letter” sites to massive sites of several hundred pages.

For the purpose of this discussion I am going to limit my comments to commercial websites only.

A commercial website has been described as the great business leveller. You see, small businesses can compete on an even playing field with giant multi-national companies in what have been described as “niche” markets. That is, specialist markets.

As I mentioned before, so many web-surfers expect all websites to deliver completely free information to them. After all, websites are really cheap to build and cost virtually nothing to maintain. Or do they?

Let’s have a look at what is involved and the typical costs:

First, you will need a telephone line. No problem. Most people have them. The cost is variable depending on what country you live in.

Next, you will need a computer. Again, no problem, most people have them too. They can range from several hundred dollars to several thousand dollars US depending on the make and model, its capacity, its range of features and the like.

With a telephone line and a computer you will then require an Internet Service Provider (ISP). An ISP will charge around US$20 per month for internet access. Broadband access will cost around US$750 per year, depending on your ISP.

Note that so far we are still just incurring the cost that the average surfing information hunter incurs.

To have a website you will either need to build it yourself or contract a specialist to build it for you. Obviously, if you do not have the knowledge and ability to do it yourself you will need a person skilled in doing this. For 15 or so pages (a reasonable sized website) you could pay in the vicinity of $1,500 US, often more.

So, now you have a telephone line, a computer, internet access and a website. Is there anything else? There sure is.

You will need a domain name for your website. This is so you can be found by your Unique Resource Locator (URL) name. That is how people will be able to find you – via links to your http://www.domainname.com name. A domain name will cost you somewhere around US $10 to $20 per year to keep it registered.

Then there is hosting. You will need a website hosting company to keep your site active and online for all the world to view. This is where the site “lives.” It’s where it is domiciled and is able to be changed by adding to or subtracting from the pages. Hosting can set you back around US$200 to $300 per year. Yes, I know some people get it for a lot less. However, like everything else if you want quality and performance then that is the going rate.

Anything else? Sure is.

Now you can really spend some money. Now your website desperately needs what all other websites need – traffic, otherwise known as visitors. You can spend thousands, even tens of thousands on this if you want.

So, let’s add it all up so far:

  1. telephone line – standard variable cost
  2. computer – standard variable cost
  3. ISP – US$240 per year.
  4. website construction US$1,500 to $2,500 (initial set up)
  5. domain name US$20 per year
  6. website hosting – US$200 to 300 per year
  7. website traffic US$nil to infinity (whatever the budget will allow)

To summarize, without the initial cost of a telephone line or a computer, the minimum cost of a commercial site is in the order of US$1,960. That does not account for any traffic costs. Nor does it account for an opt-in email collector or a delivery system to send digital products automatically. These can add the best part of another thousand dollars per annum to costs. However, we will only count what the basic ongoing yearly costs are as listed above. These amount to around US$460 at the bare minimum.

I stress that these costs are conservative. In reality a website owner can spend every cent he or she has on a commercial website. It is easy to do.

So, if you are looking to have your own website you now know what sort of money you are going to need to fund it and keep funding it year after year. And we haven’t even talked about the cost of anything that you might want to sell yet or the time it might take to develop digital products that can be downloaded from the website to a consumer.

If you are a web-surfer wanting everything free you now know why everything simply cannot be free.

Many website owners are very generous with what they provide free of charge. Just don’t expect them to give you everything for nothing. If you do then your favorite site may be out of business the next time you go to visit it. If you see something that you want then buy it. Very little in this world is free – somebody, somewhere has to pay. Something is free to you only if you do not have to pay for it.

Website owners can display this article at their own sites to explain why not everything can be free to the many visitors who expect just that. Perhaps it could be listed under a heading like: “Why Not Everything At This Website Can Be Free.”

Now Joe and Mary Websurfer will understand the costs that the average website owner has to pay before even one sale is made.

This article comes with reprint rights providing no changes are made and the resource box below accompanies it.

How to Increase User Interaction on Your Website

Your organization’s site is the face of your business. This reality is very critical for upgrading the visibility of your business to your expected clients and potential customers. Expanding your client commitment diminishes your bounce rate, builds the traffic creating more leads in hand, at last, more transformations and results in an expansion in the development of your business. Here, we give you a few essential and successful approaches to build the client connection on your site from a website specialist’s point of view.

Ease of Navigation

When you are outlining your site, try to make it effortlessly accessible and safe for your site clients. Outline your route bar such that it is steady on every single site page of your site. Confounding and convoluted plans which have a tendency to befuddle a guest ought to dependably be kept away from at any cost, as guests are normally fretful and won’t invest enough energy to delve into the substance on your site. Truth be told, uncluttered and efficient route configuration builds the potential for boosting the number of guests and furthermore in the meantime expands the stylish estimation of the webpage’s website composition.

Public Opinion About your brand on the website

Giving Testimonials and in addition, mentioning your past work says a great deal in regards to your business. Individuals’ feelings and encounters about your organization fill in as a tribute to approving your services and products. This is a magnificent element and ought to be given on your site to procure the trust and a positive social approval about the overall population assessment about your services.

Since individuals who invest energy online are dependably vigilant for realizing what others need to say in regards to the services or products they would need to utilize, along these lines outline your site in such a path thus, to the point that you incorporate this component and which will profit you over the long haul by prompting higher changes. For instance, a Website Designing Company in Delhi is probably going to have online clients who are scanning for popular sentiment about Delhi based organizations giving website designing services.

we take a pro-active approach in understanding your business and your target market within your industry, besides ensuring that every design element will work towards achieving your long-term business goals and objectives. Even if you are looking for internet marketing or rebranding your business, we have the solution. Our development company can assure you that you will be a satisfied and a repeat-business client after working with us. We are also confident that you will consider us as one of the best website designing service providers if you talk about b2b portal development especially within the country and globally as well.

6 Ways to Put Your Business Website to Work

The most important component of a company’s online strategy is its website. Unfortunately, many small businesses publish a website and then forget about it, even when promoting their products or services online. Using these tips, you can put your company’s website to work helping to sell the products or services your company offers.

Regularly Update Site

While it is important for content on a website to be informative, it is also important for it to be fresh. Updating your site on a regular basis with creative, informative content can attract a regular audience and it helps to increase your site’s search engine ranking. If your site cannot be easily updated, then you should have it replaced with one that can.

Add a Blog

One of the best ways to update your website is by writing blog posts. If there isn’t a blog currently on your website, one needs to be added so you can promote your company and the products or services it offers. Blog posts can be written by the same person or you can recruit different people from your company to add blog posts on a regular basis so your customers learn more about your business.

Hire Professional Help

Most small business owners seldom have time to dedicate to updating their website, but keeping its content fresh and updating product or service information is vital to your success. Instead of trying to maintain a website yourself, hire a digital marketing agency to update your company’s site. They can also manage your social media accounts and create online strategies to help increase your company’s revenues.

Allow Feedback

Most people like being able to read reviews about products or services they’re thinking of buying, especially if the reviews are written by a company’s customers. Allow your customers to add reviews or testimonials about your business and its products or services to the site. Even bad reviews can help boost your search engine ranking and it allows the company to find areas in which it needs to improve.

Vary Content

When web visitors click onto a website and find nothing but a sea of text, it can turn some of them off and they will leave the site within a few moments. The digital marketing agency you’ve hired can add different types of content to your site to make it more interactive. Adding videos, podcasts and images to break up the text can make your site more appealing.

Link to Social Media

If there are social media accounts for your business, then you need to have their icons on your website. This will entice many of your customers and web visitors to follow your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media accounts. If you’re not using social media for your small business, then you need to open accounts to use them to promote your company.

Your business website is the hub of your internet presence. As such, it needs to work for you to draw new web visitors and help convert them into paying customers.

Why You Need a Mobile-Friendly Website

In a survey reveals the fact that more than 80% of people prefer to search on mobile instead of a desktop. In 2018 your website must be responsive otherwise you can’t sustain in this fast changeable market.

Now building mobile-friendly website doesn’t take too much time. Coding technology has changed a lot in the last couple of years, and it takes more or less similar time to build like a static site.

We can’t deny the fact that mobile search has gained momentum worldwide in the last couple of years. Keeping it in mind many small and mediocre business owners is preferred mobile-responsive for their business interest. Thatswhy most of the website development company are now focusing on building a responsive website.

Reasons why a mobile-friendly website required in 2018:

1. The mobile search index is now entirely in effect from 2015. You can see there is a different search result in mobile and desktop. Google prefers mobile users search results to Google Ads, Google Local Listing and organically to websites that are mobile-friendly.

2. Searching performed in mobile is higher than desktop. According to study, users are spending maximum time on mobile, and most of the time they buy something online from their smartphone. So it’s quite natural from a business perspective that mobile-friendly user-interface attracts visitors more. Not only mobile friendly website users are inclined towards mobile app. Business owners are given priority to build a mobile app instead to make a website.

3. Since the easy accessibility of the internet, the demand of Smartphone arises drastically in the last 5-6 years. The survey shows that Smartphone users spend time on social media on an average of 4-5 hours daily. It is essential for any businesses to be listed correctly at online and to have a quality web presence that caters user attention. If your business is not showing in the first of SERP pages with specific keywords, means you are missing a potential business market. More than 70% of mobile consumers expect a local business within 5 miles of residence when purchasing something. The aim is to become top in search ranking page whenever a local user is searching for products and services you offer.

4. Still near about 60% website are not mobile-optimized. Now the owner of the site realizes the importance of it. Smart business owners already understand the essence of the internet and its capability to bring customers via organic search. It’s the high time is the time for business who are looking for long-term success! Now user searching behavior is also changing from organic search to voice search. Being a start-up website development company, we encourage users to make a user-friendly responsive website.

Many Many Ways to Increase Website Traffic

When I first started out in Internet Marketing, I made the mistake of not understanding how to increase website traffic. I believed that the number of pages that I could build and promote would be enough to boost a website’s ranking on the search engines.

This turned out to be a big mistake. Many of my competitors were building and optimizing their websites faster than I was and getting top rankings for much less effort. In fact, some of them were receiving hundreds of visitors per day!

What I did not realize was that website visitors respond to certain types of content and not to others. If I produced lots of blog posts, I would attract more visitors.

However, this kind of content just did not convert as well as other forms of content like videos or images. So, what I did was create a series of infographics which included the keywords I used to optimize websites.

Each of the infographics had a specific task that I thought would help to increase website traffic. The first one was called ‘High Quality Content’.

This was about ten blog posts that I had written based on my research. The next one was called ‘Domain Names: How to Pick the Right One’ and it discussed the importance of picking a domain name which was Google recognized.

I also mentioned that I did not want to be known as just a plain old black hole for people to come and go. That is not true either, but since then my rankings have actually improved quite substantially.

The last of the 10x content tools I looked at was called the ‘Offer URL Expander Tool’. I produced an article and used this format in the body. I then put a short description above the article which explained who I was and where I did business.

This helped to increase my website ranking by adding backlinks to the resource box below the article.

All of the above-mentioned content marketing and promotion methods are just part of the many strategies I use for improving the rankings of my sites.

One of them is called cold outreach. This means that I do not promote anything to my existing customer base but I do give away information.

Some of the things I give information away are how to use my product or how to get more information from my website.

What Is Cold outreach?

Cold outreach is actually the opposite of a keyword stuffing effort. You see, most people are searching for the keywords they are looking for but are specifically not searching for any keyword phrases inside your page content.

To achieve great website traffic you need to be ranking for all of the terms people are searching for. To achieve this you should look at your competitor’s content to see what keywords they are ranking for in Google, look at the amount of pages that are being searched for and then use these same keywords in your own content but in a different order.

How to increase website traffic with Facebook and Twitter by using keywordless linkbait.

A keywordless linkbait is a link that has no keywords in it. These are usually links that you place in your status updates and photos on your Facebook and Twitter pages.

By using a keywordless linkbait you can trick people into clicking through to your site by having them think they are on a website that has a lot of great content when in reality they are on a linkbait site.

How to increase website traffic with Facebook and Twitter by creating content layering.

The most effective way to get people to come to your website is to have them come to your landing pages. You will have your header, side headers, main content, and footer.

With the main content and footer you can then create content layering. This means you put one page on each of your landing pages. In the example of my landing page I have two pages; my blog post and my side content layer on each of my landing pages.

Why Is Good Website Content Important For Your Brand?

Any business needs a name to represent their product or service. It is this name that is recognized and perceived by customers and offers an instant recognition value. So to cut a long story short, the brand is the method for a business to connect with a customer. Subsequently, strong branding has a number of advantages. It creates trust and boosts employee morale. Further, it helps add value to a product and instils a sense of pride in end customers.

In a global village that our world has become, the Internet has transformed itself to be its veritable lifeline. With social media, websites and so many functions and activities, the Internet plays a pivotal role in comprehension and communication. That agreed, websites are the first building blocks to the Internet. Having a web presence boosts the engagement factor of a brand.

Some of the other benefits of a website for a business include

  • Websites help businesses communicate their brand and value even in places where the business is not physically present.
  • It can be transformed into an effective advertising tool.
  • Websites can be easily updated and refurbished.
  • Websites are a cost-effective avenue to build credibility.

Content is central to any website. Website content communicates to end audiences and moves them to action. It is a way to build reputation and proactively address existing and new audiences on a mass scale.

When content is not professionally written, it can cause confusion and annoy customers. When customers are annoyed, then that translates to lost business. Further, many potential customers will spread the word and this will only hurt your business even more.

The website content also has to be structured properly. It is only when the content is structured that it makes sense and aids readability. In the virtual web, it is extremely important that communication be clear and concise, if it has to engage audiences and impact bottom lines positively.

When information is incomplete, inaccurate or inaccessible, then the brand credibility instantly takes a hit. Content should be useful to readers and relate to the overall theme and business. This is exactly where many businesses are lost.

Engaging a professional copywriter ensures that you get the best value for money and that your needs are precisely met. With effective and engaging website content, you can make an emotional impact on readers and ensure that they understand your products and services well and thereby increase your sales dollars and goodwill value.

7 Frustrating Things Your Visitors Hate About Your Website

Why Your Business Can’t Ignore the Importance of Providing a Positive User Experience (UX)

Does your site provide the best user experience?

Bad website usability is not only bad for your users; it’s bad for your business too.

What exactly is website usability? It’s definitely one of those industry jargon terms that many entrepreneurs and business owners might not be familiar with. But should!

Website usability means: how easy is it to use your website?

If you’re unsure of what that is, then chances are you may need some help building a strategy for your website.

Your website’s use is how well it accomplishes the reason you built it. Is it to generate leads? Get someone to make a purchase? Direct people to something else? Each page of your website needs a purpose and if that purpose isn’t clear, then the usability is diminished.

When web marketers look at usability they’re looking to see whether or not a user can complete a defined task with little to no confusion or frustration.

So how do you know if your customers are finding your website easy to use?

Measuring User Experience and Usability

There are many services that have come and gone when it comes to measuring user activity and a site’s usability.

Heatmap services such as Hotjar or Crazyegg have been semi successful though woefully abused in the hands of those who don’t know what to do with the information. These types of services give the website owner a birds-eye view at where their website visitors are focusing their attention.

Testing groups can be a great asset but at the same time these are closed, controlled groups so they often inadvertently present misinformation by way of not being an accurate representation of the site’s actual target market.

The best way to check your website’s usability is your Google Analytics. Google offers its analytic web-based software for free for many reasons. One is so you can make your website better.

Within Google Analytics site owners can check things like how long someone is on a page, where they entered the page from, what they did on the page, and when they left.

If someone lands on your page and leaves nearly right away you have what is called a Bounce. If the majority of your users are bouncing (called a high bounce rate) then you have a usability issue and are offering up a bad user experience where they have left too quickly to take any action.

Another way to check is to set a conversion measurement. This is when you input information into Google Analytics that triggers a signal when someone completes a task as defined in there. You can even assign monetary values to the conversion if you want to measure the revenue generated through the conversion.

This type of analysis is best left to professionals so get in touch with my team if you need any help.

But Google doesn’t stop there with its free offerings! Try checking things like your site’s speed or mobile usability using their free tools:

Measuring usability is as complicated or as easy as your website is. Larger projects with many types of users and conversion types will have more complicated ways to measure usability but the overall message here is: does your website accomplish your business goals set for it?

Are Your Users Having A Bad Website Experience?

If you’re looking at the overall stats and the numbers are not good then it’s time to look at why your users are having a bad website experience.

Here’s 7 questions to ask yourself about your website to avoid frustrating your users:

1. Have you clearly defined what your business does and is it appealing to the right audience?

2. Did you make it as easy as possible for users to find the information they’re looking for? Typically there should be no more than 3 steps between landing on the site and finding what the user wants.

3. Can a customer contact you easily if they are stuck or have any questions?

4. Do you have any broken links on your site that will lead users to a dead end?

5. How fast does the site load (see test above)?

6. Is your website mobile responsive?

7. How transparent is your About page?

Nothing can be more frustrating than a dead end so make sure you don’t have any. Users need to have trust established by a website if they’re going to commit their time, money, or both to it.

This is where user test groups can come in handy. Universal website staples that often get forgotten are there so someone who has never been to your website before can have a good experience on it.

Check the few points listed above and if there are areas you haven’t covered or you need help with then get in touch and we’ll be able to break it all down for you.

Is User Experience Really The Same As Usability?

The experience and expectations will vary greatly between websites depending on their purpose.

For large scale big businesses, user experience transcends platforms and current award winners are melding online with offline in attempts to boost both point of sale ‘conversions’ on site and web conversions.

For anyone working in small to medium sized businesses usability is your website’s user experience so focus on that. Make sure when someone lands on your website searching for something, they find what they were needing as quickly and easily as possible.

And don’t forget your user experience doesn’t end there!

A Conversion Is Not the End of the Road for Good Website User Experience

Provide Great Support

Your user experience doesn’t stop when the conversion does.

Think about the process of your conversion from the perspective of someone performing the conversion.

Once you’re done, are you coming back to the website? If you do, are you going to be able to get the support you need right away?

Not having a support channel or any indication of one is a big negative for any user. They likely won’t buy from you if they don’t think they can contact you afterwards regarding any problems.

Refine Your Website Based on Feedback

Make sure you respond to negative feedback with more than dismissive apologies or a canned ‘thanks for the feedback we’ll work on it’ email. Users who have a bad experience during a conversion but a great experience with support can be recovered customers who will likely buy again.

Accept negative feedback as an opportunity to improve even if you disagree with it.

Take what you learn from the feedback as a gift. If a user takes the time to complain about something, treat it seriously and remedy the situation (within reason).

Maybe they completed their task but have feedback on how easy (or not) it was?

In addition to analyzing your Google Analytics, you can follow up with surveys for customers (if they opt in for having one sent to their email of course) to help refine your user experience.

If you need help drafting a survey try this list of some basic website experience survey questions to ask.

Fire Your Website Developer for Artistic Nonsense

In the current digital world, which has accelerated with the pandemic, websites are crucial to surviving and thriving in business. As the great football coach Vince Lombardi stated, Winning isn’t everything. It is the Only Thing. Your company website must be a winner as defined by generating business opportunity and not by art. Now, art is certainly a key ingredient of a successful website, yet not the most important. To win in the game of business, a website must get customer benefits into the mind of the consumer in a quick and efficient way.

People and businesses shop to improve their world through a purchase. The essence of marketing is to show the consumer how this change will occur. If they believe you, then transactions take place. If not, an opportunity was squandered. A tour of the digital marketplace shows a swamp of dysfunctional websites designed by self-centered website developers, who are more interesting in making themselves look good instead of moving the e-commerce needle.

In an attempt to capture the attention of younger consumers, companies often make the tragic mistake of buying into the misguided notion that if a website has a cool, hip appearance, then customers will beat a path to their doorstep. However, customers of any age will not stay on a website, which makes navigation difficult and finding essential information a chore. Visual buttons, learn more options, and phone numbers should be abundantly visible on the homepage.

Are you as tired as me of searching all over a website to find a phone number? Obtaining a phone call from an excited customer is a gold nugget. An opportunity exists to win a customer and potentially earn the most valuable prize of all. A raving fan, who is satisfied and excited about your business and becomes a walking, talking billboard to promote your company for free. To find these customers, the homepage must reach out to them in an emotionally-compelling way and make a positive impact in less than five seconds. Without these types of moments occurring hundreds of times throughout the day, your website is worthless.

If you want to be more artistic, then spend Saturdays in an art gallery. Don’t allow artsy hipsters to mess up your business with trying to make themselves and your company look cool. Step back from their gimmicks and Instagram-fueled frenzy and focus on the time-tested practical principles that generate revenue. Long before the Internet was the advertising medium, which has struggled with the same concerns.

Focus relentlessly on the customer. How can we improve their world and make their life better? Use website tools to accelerate their excitement with brochure downloads, video clips, white papers and compelling content of any kind. Content is king and Google will reward with you with vastly higher search engine rankings by continually publishing Internet-friendly content. Just be a good digital neighbor. Increase practicality and decrease art to watch your business grow.

If you want to build a lead machine, then visit http://www.marketplace.net.

Why WordPress Website Design Is the Best Choice for You?

To make your site attractive and stand out from other places, you can take advantage of the WordPress development service. Your website is definitely unique.

There is no doubt that today’s online marketing has a variety of aspects. In this era of the Internet, online marketing has become one of the largest platforms for promoting websites. The competition between different website owners has greatly increased. Therefore, it’s important to adopt one of the most advanced and up-to-date strategies, through which you can increase brand awareness and attract more customers to your website. The strategy adopted by marketing should be that each website is completely unique and dynamic. It’s worth noting that WordPress is an important service through which websites can rank well in search engine lists such as Google, Yahoo, Bing and MSN.

In terms of functionality, flexibility and security, no content management system can beat WordPress. WordPress is a versatile content management system that allows you to easily develop and manage your website with the help of WordPress. Whether you want to develop a custom blog or a commercial website, WordPress web design is your ideal solution.

WordPress web design and development is not just about clicking the install button nowadays available in all hosted cpanel.There are many behind-the-scenes considerations that affect your website. WordPress is a very flexible site design program. It can handle a wide variety of things, making it easy for you or your designer to have complete control. This means it might be similar to being a child in a dessert shop that wants to see everything. But usually, the less the better, the temptation to add every imaginable ringtone and whistle “just in case” is worth it.

Why choose WordPress to create a powerful website

It’s free and easy to use platform

Thousand of themes give more creativity than a designer

Use of Plug-ins reduces the coding efforts and file size too.

Secured system

WordPress is the world’s most popular free and open source platform for ecommerce website development. Now Indian professionals are also building websites in WordPress. Not only that, but Delhi’s web design company is also committed to providing web hosting services. With web development. Design and development are consistent, and the organization’s hosting is icing on the cake, so no matter where you want to hire a professional, you can provide all of these services.

Are you want to low cost web designing? Website Designing Service is a Website designing company offering low cost website designing, Affordable web design and development services, Responsive website design and many more services.

To know more about Website Designing Service, visit our website http://www.websitedesigningservice.com/

Your Website’s All Wrong – And You Have the Data to Prove It

I like fantasies as much as the next person, but when I walk into a house I think it should be real. You know, it should actually have walls and such. That’s not what I found when I arrived at a recently renovated AirBnB bungalow. I had spent hours looking through listings to find the perfect place.

The lodging looked quaint, and it even had its own garage for secure parking, which was a real selling point for the location. Instead, what I found when I arrived reminds me a lot of what’s wrong with most medical website designs. As I pulled up, everything looked just as it should: the building matched the photos and the garage looked normal… from the outside. Here’s what it looked like when I drove my rental car into the garage.

There was nothing to the garage-it was a facade with no substance. It was like walking up to a Ferrari and opening the hood to find no engine. What a letdown! Garages are more than a parking spot; They serve a function-to keep your car safe. Yet this garage not only wasn’t enclosed, there were loose boards hanging from the ceiling and construction materials lying around.

What does this have to do with website design? Take a look at your website’s data. Your website may be absolutely gorgeous with a slick design, but if it’s not bringing in business for you, it’s completely useless-just fluff without any substance at all. Worse, if it’s not serving three basic functions, it may be losing you patients.

Websites Are More Than a Pretty Design

Your website design should be more than a pretty picture. Every element should be designed to be compelling and persuasive and lead toward the action you want patients to take. It should focus on your patient’s needs, and most important of all, it should be increasing business. Ask yourself, how many new patients has my website generated this month?

If your website isn’t generating ten to fifteen new patients a month, it’s just a shell. Pretty, perhaps, on the outside, but useless for attracting new patients or generating phone calls and appointments. Great medical website design should grab the patient’s attention, start to build trust, and encourage them to come meet you in person. We have more than 10 years of experience designing, testing and building medical websites that do just these things, and here’s what we’ve found.

Research Reveals: It’s All About Trust

One of the key findings of a recent report by Yext was that more than 3 quarters of patients search for individual providers when looking for a doctor. They aren’t looking for hospitals or healthcare facilities; They want to know the individual doctor they will be dealing with, and they want to know they can entrust their health and well-being to this person. Our medical websites go beyond listing staff and specialties. Our web designs focus on the primary concerns of patients-which doctor will I be seeing, and can I entrust my health to them?

What could that mean for your practice? “Our Q1 2018 gross revenue is up by 500%, compared to a year ago,” says Lori Klein Gardner, Au.D., of Hear Virginia. “Our Q1 net revenue has tripled, our new appointments have nearly doubled per month.” That’s the power of a customer-focused website. Launch a radically more effective website in just weeks.

Build Your Credibility

In a report by Weatherby Healthcare, patients rated a physician’s knowledge and abilities above all else when deciding which doctor to go to. But how they determine knowledge is often based on reviews and other online sources. More than half of patients research doctors before make making an appointment, and three out of four patients consider reviews important before deciding which doctor to visit. In fact, reviews were just as important to patients as the office location.

This trend follows basic consumer behavior: 91% of consumers read reviews before buying something, and 84% of them will trust reviews as much as they would advice from a friend. Many practices know reviews are important, but struggle with getting a steady influx of good reviews. Review tools can not only simplify this process, but get dramatically better results.

Rather than trying to get patients to send reviews directly to your site, review software, such as Online Review Builder™, engages patients where they prefer to leave reviews-on social media. Online Review Builder then funnels those reviews back to the practice’s site where new patients are likely to see them. “Our practice has grown 21% in the last year and I attribute 99% of our growth to our Online Review Builder™ and our 46 positive Google reviews!” says Gena Marino, Fairfax Hearing Center, VA.

Convert Interest into an Appointment

Once you’ve attracted patients and built up trust and credibility, your website design should encourage them to set up an appointment. This crucial last step actually is an entire science unto itself. Increasing conversions on a site requires a clear hierarchy of information and customer paths that lead to strong calls to action.

At the end of the day, what you want customers to do is to call for an appointment. “We’re getting 5 times as many leads from the web, worth $20,000 a month to our practice” says Sean Pendel, Audiology Associates and Hearing Aids Today of Nashville, TN. Does your website do that? Audit your website today.

Freelance Web Designer | WordPress Developer | Hong Kong