Medical Marketing 101: How To Build An Effective Web Site

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By Richard J. Lenz

Ok, so you met with your practice partners and decided you need a web site. What’s next? First, you must decide what kind of web site you need. For most practices, their web sites are actually what are called brochure, content, or information sites. They are more or less static presentations of your business (example: www.georgialung.com) and not e-commerce (sales) sites that require more coding and back-end support (example: www.amazon.com).

This may seem simplistic, but I strongly urge you to think through your marketing communications needs and determine what you want your web site to do before you start. Having a solid plan before you start and doing it right the first time is less costly than having to redo it again later. Once you determine your communications goals, everything else will become easier as you plan, design, build, and maintain your site.

It is important to decide what your patients will be looking for on your web site. Do you want people to: Learn more about a medical topic, disease, procedure, or technology? Buy one of your health care-related products? Hire you to perform a medical evaluation or procedure? Communicate more easily with you to make appointments or stay in touch about their disease management? Or be motivated into taking some action that benefits their health?

After you determine your goals, look for practices like yours that you directly compete with, as well as those outside your market, to see what the competition is doing. Find a web site you like because of its attractiveness, usability, and depth. In searching for a good model, try to imagine what your patients, potential staff, payers, and the media would like to find on your web site, versus only what you find interesting. In building your site, there are three main areas: content, organization, and design. Evaluate other web sites in these three categories. You want yours to be well organized and easy to navigate, with excellent content that your audience is looking for, with a fresh design appearance.

Second, you must determine what resources your practice has to produce and support your web site. Some believe producing a web site is a one-time expense. It is not. Done correctly, even a brochure site requires ongoing attention to assure it remains factual about your practice and relevant to your overall marketing plan. As you plan for your launch, think carefully about what in-house resources you have versus the need to subcontract the work out. Either way, you will need to assign staff resources to help build and maintain your web site.

What does a web site cost? Well, it depends mainly on three factors.

1. How many pages will your web site have? Some practices sites have a dozen pages, whereas others have hundreds.

2. How technically complex does your web site need to be to be an effective marketing communications tool? Some practice sites, such as cosmetic surgery web sites, have flash animation to show “befores and afters” or testimonial movies about their work (example: www.griffincenter.com).

3. Where is the content coming from? Are you going to write all the content and create all the photography and graphics, or hir e a professional? The good news for your wallet is that practice sites are generally brochure sites, which are less expensive to build and maintain. Also, the digital revolution has pushed many graphic arts into the hands of consumers. If you plan to keep your site small and inexpensive, there are many “Do It Yourself” options available on the Internet.

One of the most promising is still in the testing phase at Google at http://labs.google.com. Some are so simple to use that even children have started building personal web sites where they can show grandma photos from their Disney World trip. The costs involved with a DIY website is the time you spend learning how to do it, plus the expense of buying your web site domain name, also known as the URL, which costs $70 to initiate and $35 a year thereafter; and the monthly expense of hosting, i.e., where the web site programming is located. A typical package is found at webdesign.atlantageorgiawebdesigners.com, which will host a 5-page site for $6.95 a month.

But that may not be the best option. You may need a professional to either save you time or to produce the kind of web site that has outstanding graphics, usability, and content. My mother used to tell me that I should dress the way I want people to perceive me. Maybe that sounds simplistic, but it has relevance for all your marketing communications and especially your web site. If your graphics are old and out-dated, poorly produced, or look cheap and thrown together, your medical reputation will suffer.

The cost of professional services varies based on what you need and the designer’s experience, but expect to pay between $5,000 for a relatively basic site to $50,000 (and more) for a bigger, more complex site. Also, some designers will set up a template design and give you the tools to maintain it, while others will build it and help you keep it updated and graphically fresh.

—Filed under Marketing by Richard J. Lenz