In the ever-expanding digital consumer landscape, proper web design is imperative to a business’s success. Consumers gravitate towards websites that are easy to use and provide solutions to their questions or problems. However, creating a design that meets your audience’s needs and finding the right medical website design company for you can be challenging.
That’s why we’re breaking down how you can set up your healthcare and medical website for success.
1. Define Your Medical Web Design Goals
Every healthcare web design agency is going to take a different approach to website layout and success. But you also need to be aware of what you’re looking for the company to accomplish. After all, if your desire is a minimalistic approach that allows users to easily navigate and contact you, and the company instead goes for a site crammed with articles and word blocks, then you may be getting results, but not desired ones. Your vision may also vary with the size of your business. You need a web design agency that will properly communicate and understand your vision for your site. The clearer your ideas are and the more the agency is willing to work with them, the better.
2. Choose an Agency with a Mobile-First Approach
Consumers make snap judgments. Around 47% of people expect a web page to load in two seconds or less, and failing that expectation can be a bad first impression. You can use this to your advantage, though, especially within healthcare and medical web design, which has a reputation for relying on slow, outdated technology. Fight that preconceived notion with a website that’s smooth and responsive. It’s a sign to visitors that you’re familiar with technology and willing to make the site as accessible as possible. On top of this, make sure your medical website design company can properly design a site that’s responsive for computer, tablet, and mobile users, so you can reach a wide audience as two out of every three minutes spent online are on mobile devices now.
3. Incorporate Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
On top of making a website that looks and behaves properly, it’s also important your healthcare web design agency is familiar with search engine optimization and is able to incorporate it into the site. SEO is the gateway to getting your site visits from Google searches, and it’s proven to be a vital role in successful businesses, particularly as the Google search algorithm updates frequently. Having SEO built into your site from the get-go will be a huge boost to site performance, and save you from having to look for SEO services in the future. If your agency knows and offers SEO, your business will benefit.
4. Look at the Agency’s Portfolio
Odds are you’re not the first person searching for healthcare web design services. Legitimate agencies will have a portfolio of medical web design work done for various past clients, who likely have rated that agency somewhere that is publicly visible. Just make sure to do the right research to avoid fake or paid reviews, since those are becoming more problematic. In fact, it never hurts to reach out to companies directly and ask for their insight on the agency and their process. The more you know how others have fared in the past the more prepared you can be to take this on in the present.
5. Keep Communication Lines Open with the Team
Healthcare and medical web design companies often rely on an organized team of people to put together sites. It’s important to know the people that will be working on your site, how you can interact with them, and how well they can work with each other. Communication varies among companies and people, you want one that’s on the same wavelength. Also, you might be assigned lower or higher-level designers, whose different levels of expertise will ultimately impact the project. More importantly, if you want to have a big say in how your website gets made, you want to work with people who will value your input. And if the opposite is what you want, there’s plenty of independent agencies to choose from. Ask the team if they will need your guidance when it comes to creating copy in your niche, are well-versed in medical jargon, and are aware of industry regulations and limitations.
6. Get Familiar with the Platform
Healthcare web design doesn’t rely on a universal standard. There are various frameworks for websites, from WordPress to Joomla, Drupal, and more. Some of these frameworks allow for easier control if you want to edit the site on your own every once in a while. A respectable web design company will inform you of their recommended platform, and may even offer to show you how it works. An agency that’s transparent like this will be a good one to work with. If you have your own preferences about what your platform should be, remember that appearances do matter, as two-thirds of people would rather read something beautiful than something plain.
7. Adapt to Medical Web Design Trends
With the digital world expanding so rapidly, healthcare and medical web design undergo constant shifts. For instance, the common theme among healthcare websites is a clean, minimalistic interface. But that can always change, and your medical website design company needs to be willing to change with it. Distinguishing between on-trend agencies and off-trend companies is easy as agency executives are likely to post blogs and social media about their current pursuits and anticipations, and may even try to establish a few trends of their own. Essentially, you want an agency with good thought leadership that can recognize and compete with the evolving market.
Keep Your Vision in Mind
When choosing a healthcare web design agency, keep in mind the type of website you want, the platform it should be on, and search engine optimization tasks that need to be done. From there, you can search for a web design agency that can help you reach your current goals.