“How should I structure my dental practice website?” This question has crossed the minds of many dentists. And rightfully so. A poorly structured website does nothing to add to the reputation of the practice. Good website structure for a dental practice is necessary to bring in more new patients and increase production.
Understanding Website Structure for a Dental Practice Website
To better understand website structure, let’s consider the following scenario. Picture yourself at a mall for the first time and you’re looking for a directory to find stores. Imagine that there isn’t one, no matter how hard you look. Or, imagine you find one and it’s difficult to understand or it’s inaccurate. Any of these will make finding your way around the mall pretty difficult. This is the same kind of difficulty online visitors face when they encounter poor website structure.
Online visitors aren’t known for their patience. If they become frustrated by the structure of your website, the chances are good that they’ll leave. However, you have even more to worry about than that. Google is fully aware of what happens on your website. If lots of people bounce from your website quickly, they will see your website as having low value. That’s bad because they’ll likely lower your ranking… and that means fewer people will find your website.
Structuring Your Dental Practice Website
In evaluating good structure, we must need the basic ingredients of what you should expect to find on a website. In general, it should look like this:
The Homepage
As your main landing page, the home page is the foundation of your website. It’s likely to be the most visited as well. Like the center of a wagon wheel, all points converge on the homepage. And the homepage is the way many people will begin their navigation of your website. Think of your home page like that directory in the mall. New visitors depend on it. An effective homepage is a critical ingredient of proper website structure for a dental practice.
Sections (landing pages on need-based services, elective services, etc.)
The different sections of your website will usually be found by visitors on the home page or via a Google search. For a dental practice, key landing pages are usually about need-based or elective treatment you provide.
Subsections (Especially Important For Group Practice Websites)
The larger the website, the easier it is to delve deeper into individual services your practice provides. When these are the first pages that visitors encounter, they shouldn’t find themselves at a dead-end there. Good website structure for a dental practice ensures there are indicators of other interesting places on your website to visit.
Dental Practice Website Structure: A Few Reminders
In the course of improving the structure of a dental practice website, you should be thinking about making certain the following things happen:
Navigation Is Clear
Think about navigation apps. If they tell you to get on the wrong roads, you’re not going to rely on them for long. Proper website structure for a dental practice website requires that navigation takes visitors where they want to go. If your navigation doesn’t do that, it’s about as useless as a bad navigation app.
Menus Make Sense
Think about that mall directory sign again. Would you be annoyed if the lettering was tiny and difficult to read? What if you couldn’t tell which floor you were on? How about if it didn’t even bother to include a “You are here” indicator? All of this adds up to a frustrating experience.
Any good directory sign will help you find where you’re going. Your website menu should do the same. If you want visitors to remain on your dental practice website, don’t make it difficult for them to do so.
Your Internal Linking Strategy Should Be Smart
Any smart website is going to have internal links to drive people to other parts of the website. However, this needs to be done carefully. For a start, it’s bad form to have an excessive number of internal links on a web page. Also, there needs to be a clear reason for an internal link. Should a link seem irrelevant to website visitors, they won’t click on it. When that happens, your internal linking strategy falls on its face.
Internal links should further enhance the visitor’s experience while on your dental practice website. The whole purpose is to keep people on your website longer. The longer they stay, the more engaged they become. In the end, an engaged visitor is more likely to call your office to schedule an appointment.
Your Practice’s Website Structure May Not Be Helping You
All of your practice’s digital marketing initiatives revolve around your website. If your website is doing its job, more people will become patients. If it doesn’t, decreased production is inevitable. To make sure your practice’s structure is effective, it’s advisable to work with digital marketing experts. They will know what excellent website structure for a dental practice looks like.
Dreamscape Marketing has created hundreds of websites for our healthcare clients. A Premier Google Partner, we were recently recognized as one of the top five SEO agencies in the United States. Contact us today at 877-958-9180 or through our “Contact Us” webpage. Excellent website structure for a dental practice is your key to increased production.