When considering your digital assets, there’s nothing more important than your hospital website design. Your website is the first impression prospective patients have when they Google your hospital, click a link you post, or even visit via a backlink.
All your hard digital marketing work culminates here. Think of your website as a landing spot for your leads because, in most strategies, the goal is to direct them to your site. Their landing needs to be soft and comfortable. Any less, and users will bounce.
What Makes Great Hospital Website Design?
Your prospective patients and those researching healthcare services don’t want to work hard to find the information they’re looking for. Which begs the question, how do you create a user-friendly website patients actually want to use? Hospital marketers have been asking themselves this question for ages. The answer is simple! Great hospital website design means you need to:
- Design for mobile devices first
- Thoughtfully curate your site
- Use images and videos to enhance understanding
- Obey the law
Despite the seeming simplicity of these tasks, executing them successfully is anything but easy. Today we’re taking a closer look at four tips to optimize your hospital website design. Following them will drive more traffic to your site and increase conversions.
1. Mobile-First Design
When Google assesses any page’s search engine optimization (SEO) value, the search engine considers your mobile site before your desktop site. Even though mobile devices account for 60% of web traffic, Google’s preference for mobile still surprises many marketers.1 This means in order to rank at the top of the search results, your hospital’s website should focus on mobile-first design.
So what do we mean by mobile-first design? Simply put, mobile-first website design prioritizes a good user experience on mobile devices. That’s not to say a website that performs poorly or isn’t user-friendly on desktops is acceptable.
An effective website includes responsive design elements. The layout and components should be easy to navigate regardless of platform. As a result, your website will rank higher, hold the attention of visitors longer, and increase overall conversions.
2. Design Decisions Count
Hospital website design must highlight your brand. Your hospital’s brand is the unique visual identity that determines your header’s appearance, the fonts you use, and even the photos and videos you incorporate. An established branding package eliminates some decision-making. But since half of consumers consider an organization’s website design when forming their opinion, there’s always pressure to make the right choices.2
In addition to remaining consistent with your hospital brand, create a clear navigation pane users can easily find and use. Don’t go overboard with buttons and graphics. Your calls to action (CTAs) should be easy to find and follow. Prospective patients should be able to quickly locate important information about your hospital.
Page speed is another consideration of hospital website design. A Google study discovered a 32% increase in bounce rates when pages took more than three seconds to load.3 Patients visit your site for a specific purpose—not to wait while a page loads.
3. Include Visuals
Visuals are a must-have in hospital website design. Strong visuals can quickly and clearly convey your brand’s personality, increase user engagement, and help build connections with your audience. When selecting images for your site, choose high-quality pictures that load quickly and correctly.
Images also help patients understand your site better and hold users’ attention for half a second longer than written content.4 So, the more time users spend looking at your photos, the more likely they’ll consume the content, too.
4. Compliance is Essential in Hospital Website Design
State and federal standards dictate how hospitals are depicted online. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) offer essential guidelines for your hospital’s website design.
As a healthcare organization, compliance is everything, and your site is required to meet the relevant federal and state standards. From secure hosting and data security policies to help protect patient information to accessibility requirements, these regulations are intended to help patients feel secure and comfortable when trusting you with their health care information.
Not sure which standards and regulations apply to your hospital? Digital marketing agencies specializing in the hospital space can help you determine which requirements your website needs to follow.
Interested in learning more about how you can optimize your hospital’s website to connect with your audience and convert new patients? Dreamscape Marketing can help. Schedule a strategy session with us by calling 888.307.7304.
For a list of references, please contact us.