There are 1.91 billion websites online right now, and that number is rising every second. What does this mean for your hearing practice? It means there’s no room for error when it comes to designing your website.
Because let’s face it, there is nothing stopping someone from hitting that “back button” on their browser and working with one of your local competitors with the number of choices people have on the internet today.
Factors that result in “bad website design” are continually changing. Fortunately, however, there are some essential website design mistakes your hearing practice should try to avoid. This will help boost your website presence, as well as conversion rates on your website.
Below are some things you should avoid on your website.
1. A lack of contact details
Your website is there to serve a specific function, which is to get new hearing patients to visit you for hearing consultations. This is why it is essential to provide contact details and make it easy to find them.
You should also provide various sources from which your hearing patients can keep in contact with you. For example, mention your phone number or contain links to your social media accounts.
2. Hidden Navigation Menu / Pages Not Easily Accessible
Visitors to your website use visual hints from your navigation menus to successfully move through your site. They use these visual indications to help them orient themselves within your website.
A navigation menu that isn’t easy to understand visually requires visitors to guess which elements are menu items on the page, where those menu items will take them, and whether that page will answer their questions or solve their problems.
On the other hand, clear navigation keeps your visitors oriented towards the page. Transparent menus, breadcrumb navigations, and design indicators help your customers ease through your website effortlessly.
4. No Clear Call to Action
Missing calls for action are probably among the biggest mistakes we see with small hearing practice websites.
A call to action (or CTA) will guide visitors on what their next move will be. A prompt is written on a link or button in prominent text to compel them to perform a particular action.
A right call to action is brief and tells website users precisely what they should be doing.
4. Not Mobile-Friendly
Smartphones now form a part of our everyday lives. That’s why it’s not enough to make a website specifically for a PC. Your hearing practice website should be mobile-first designed to ensure it is responsive on a smartphone screen. A 2017 study by BrightEdge reported that 57 percent of all web traffic is from mobile devices, and that number has risen since then.
By considering the mobile experience, the user and your website will interact better. It typically includes steps to minimize scrolling time, and smaller text to allow full-width content. In today’s age, a mobile-friendly website is essential for any hearing practice.
5. Not Secure (Doesn’t Have an SSL Certificate)
Breaches of data and hacks are becoming more commonplace, and website users are aware of that. There were more than 33,000,000 hacked websites in 2017 alone.
Not having a safe website is like raising a red flag for both search engines and visitors to the site. And that is true even if you aren’t selling anything on your website.
When you are requesting personal information from potential hearing aid customers, your site has to be secure. If not, Google (and other search engines)
are going to push you further down the search results and limit your online visibility.
AuDSEO
As you browse through this list, you might have noticed a pattern – it’s all about the user experience. What are your customers looking for, and what actions do you hope they will take? User experience is about more than giving your potential customers a good time. Keep your users satisfied, and they will come back to you for details, and hopefully, in the future, to do business.