We recently wrote a blog all about getting your optometry website seen through search engine optimization; dotting your site’s I’s, so to speak, by making sure all of your contact information is consistent across the web; using social media, and other means. Those are all things we do every day at MyAdvice for hundreds of clients through building and optimizing beautiful, effective, hard-working websites.
In that blog, we also discussed myriad reasons why having your nephew design your practice website isn’t such a great idea, no matter how great the price! With an optometry website design in mind, in this blog, let’s cover some of the cool things our MyAdvice designers are doing to make our optometry practices stand out.
Search is on the move
The days of patients and potential patients searching for your practice from the comfort of their home office are long gone. Today the majority of search queries are made on mobile devices — smartphones and tablets. For some industries such as food and beverage, the numbers approach three-quarters of all searches coming from mobile. These statistics came from Hitwise, which analyzed hundreds of millions of online search queries in late spring 2016. Today’s numbers are probably even higher!
But surely that doesn’t apply to an optometry practice or other healthcare services. People still like to search for those practices from their desktop at home or work, right? Nope. The Hitwise report had the health industry tied for second place in the percentage of mobile searches at 68 percent, tied with sports. And to think that people are searching for health information just as much as they are the latest sports scores simply underlines the fact that your website needs to be ready. Mobile search ready.
How Patients Search on Google
A recent webinar we hosted with Google discussing how patients are searching for healthcare providers online.
These days there is nothing worse than a website built for the desktop that is virtually unreadable and thoroughly unnavigable when viewed on an iPhone. Every website we build at Advice is inherently mobile-friendly. In fact, while we love the available design space when we’re thinking how a site will be viewed on the desktop, we always have mobile right there in the front of our thinking. Our sites are still beautiful on your phone, but they’re also simple to navigate, with easy options to get to necessary menus and contact information (more on that below).
View Our Optometry Website Portfolio
Our desktop and mobile designs have continuity, meaning you’ll know it’s the same practice website no matter where you’re searching, but their designs differ based on the horizontal strengths of desktop, versus the usual vertical orientation of mobile. The question is — does your optometry web design do this?
Make your contact info “sticky”
Studies show that when a user is scrolling down on a page on their phone, they are looking for information. But when they scroll upward, they’re looking for a menu or contact information. That’s why every mobile design we create at Advice has what is called a “sticky menu.” As soon as the user scrolls upward, an abbreviated overlay menu bar appears at the top of the screen with the practice name, a live link to the phone number, and a full site menu icon. Scroll back downward, and the sticky menu goes away.
Here is an example of a static menu. Notice the menu is always accessible no matter where the user is on the page.
On our desktop design, since there is more available acreage, once the user moves down the page, we overlay a dimensional menu bar that remains up at the top. This includes your practice phone and a live link, along with your other menu tabs. If the user clicks on a secondary link, the overlay goes away, but it returns the instant the user moves down that page.
By our incorporation of sticky menus, your patient or potential patient can get the information he or she wants, and as soon as they’re ready to book an appointment or delve even deeper into your site the contact number or other menu tabs are right there for them. No hunting about. Again — does your optometry web design do this?
It’s more than just words
While our writers don’t like to hear this, our web design goes beyond simply headlines and copy. Sure, writing is critical in healthcare practice website design because users often need extensive information to understand procedures, but we also incorporate other content to keep them engaged. We place large images or graphics that show detail. For your practice, that could be a side-by-side comparison of scenes viewed through a normal lens and a cataract-clouded lens, for instance. We place videos and animations wherever applicable to help patients understand the procedures we’re detailing in the copy. All of these elements work to more deeply engage the user, making them far more likely to call or schedule an appointment with you because of the extensive information you’ve provided.
View Our Optometry Counseling Tools
Not to be redundant, but is your Optometry website’s design doing this?
From mobile-optimized sites to sticky menus to engaging content, your optometry website design has to work hard introducing patients to your practice. Static pages that were developed for desktop don’t cut it. Limited copy doesn’t cut it. And a lack of other design elements such as animations or video doesn’t cut it.
There’s a reason we’ve been at the forefront of medical website design for longer than anyone else in the industry. Why not give us a call and let’s show you how we can change the focus, pardon the pun, of your optometry practice web design.
