Drug rehab web development is a critical component of your addiction treatment facility’s success. Phone calls and admissions are closely tied to how effective your website is at attracting and retaining visitors. To give prospective patients what they want, your website’s design and content must satisfy their requirements, both conscious and unconscious.
For people seeking drug rehab treatment, your website gives prospective patients their first impression of your facility. It could convince them to finally do the right thing. Or it may push them away to another facility. Your drug rehab web development will determine which direction this first interaction takes.
Through its experience of designing and creating content for hundreds of addiction treatment facilities, Dreamscape Marketing recommends the following quality guidelines to strive for with your website:
Simple, Intuitive Navigation
Here’s a good rule to follow… if people are looking for specific information about types of treatment or therapies on your website, they should be able to find within five to 10 seconds of hitting the landing page. That will only happen if your navigation is uncluttered and easy to understand.
Obviously, you want to steer people toward the most important pages. You should know which ones they are and Google Analytics can certainly confirm which pages people go to the most. It’s not a great mystery really. Your most visited pages will likely contain testimonials and information about specific therapies or programs. Effective drug rehab web development ensures you can get them where they want to go quickly.
Effective Content
You want people to visit your detox or drug rehab website, and you hope to turn that visit into an admission at some point. To make that happen, your website needs to be a valuable experience for prospective patients. That means providing information they want, presented in a way they can easily understand.
You need to upload pages with topics that people are looking for. Then, you have to write interesting, compelling content. However, the job isn’t done. This is marketing writing, which requires a different mindset than any other type of writing. Yes, you are giving viewers information that they want, but a marketing writer’s job doesn’t end there.
Marketing writing needs to put the idea in the readers’ minds that addiction will alter lives. It’s perfectly appropriate to tap into emotions when discussing what addiction does to people. For the addicted individuals themselves, this is a realization that they need to acknowledge within themselves. For parents or loved ones, this is validation that their concern isn’t misplaced.
Finally, your drug rehab content must push the reader into action. Not forcefully. Just a gentle push. Your content should tell the reader what the next step is. Don’t assume they will figure it out for themselves. Remember that excellent drug rehab web development is about highly effective and motivating content, not just the design and navigational components.
Mobile-Friendly Design
Mobile phones are being used for all computer functions more and more these days. Without a mobile-friendly website, your addiction treatment center is essentially living in the past. At present, about two-thirds of America’s population uses smartphones, and they use them for most of their online searches. If individuals are looking for a detox or drug rehab center, they are more and more likely to be using a smartphone to do it.
When people land on your addiction treatment website using their smartphone, they want to find it easy to read and easy to navigate. If your website is neither, they will be annoyed and see your website as “old-fashioned.” Being seen as old-fashioned isn’t a good thing for addiction treatment centers that need to be seen as leading edge in their treatment.
If websites aren’t optimized for mobile, that represents an unsatisfactory experience for more than 50% of the people landing on that website. That’s a red flag for Google. Why? Because Google views a mobile-friendly website as a valuable search result. A website that isn’t mobile-friendly is of lesser value. In order to keep giving readers the most useful search results possible, Google will accordingly demote an un-optimized website in its ranking system. A mobile-friendly website is part of every smart drug rehab web development plan.
Professional-Grade Photos
Amateur photographers have opportunities like never before. A mid-level DSLR camera, for instance, can produce images of remarkable sharpness and clarity. Even cell phones can produce photographs in high resolution. That puts a lot of power in the hands of virtually any photographer. However, it doesn’t mean just any photographer can take professional photographs.
Lighting, composition, focal lengths, iris settings… these are all the domain of the professional photographer. You can have the greatest digital camera in your hands and still produce photographs with horrible lighting or composition. Anyone can get their hands on the technology. It’s the acquired skill that makes the difference.
Professional photography enhances your drug rehab website immensely. True drug rehab web development will always keep this open as an option. It’s also possible to use stock photography. Although this photography can look good, it doesn’t showcase the look of your facility. If you must use stock photography, use it wisely.
Ready to Take Drug Rehab Web Development to the Next Level?
Just because you’ve had your website for years doesn’t mean it’s doing its job. Maybe it’s time for a whole new website that can more successfully drive traffic to your detox or drug rehab center.
Dreamscape Marketing, a Premier Google Partner, has built hundreds of drug rehab websites and created more than 50,000 pages of original content. Our SEO experts can make sure your web pages have been properly optimized to compete effectively in what has become a highly competitive field. Let’s turn your website into one that drives traffic and admissions. Contact us at 888.307.7304 today.