Authentic, compelling web design might just be the single most important aspect of successful mental health marketing. When you’re trying to build a sense of trust with your audience, the right website makes all the difference.
After all, your website is your mental health treatment center’s digital home. Prospective patients visit to learn about the services and treatment options you offer. But they also want to learn about your values and why they should trust your center with their care.
The key to authentic web design is creating a fluid user experience and a professional, consistent brand image. Because your website needs to accomplish different goals, making the right design decisions is one of the most complex parts of mental health digital marketing.
Web design involves everything from backend development to graphic design and SEO to content marketing. With so many moving parts, you might not have a sense of how best to authentically communicate your brand’s identity and build trust through web design. With these best practices, you’ll be well on your way to impressive prospective patients.
Best Practices for Building Trust Through Mental Health Web Design
The good news is, you’re not in this alone. A mental health marketing agency specializes in authentic web design and elevates your strategy to attract more patients. But understanding a few best practices for authentic mental health web design goes a long way toward getting you started.
1. Internal Linking Structure is Crucial for SEO and UX
The internal linking structure of your site covers the way all your pages are connected and how visitors navigate through them. Thinking about your mental health treatment center’s site’s structure means deciding what page you want prospective patients to see first.
What information are they most eager to find? After they’ve read your homepage’s content, what questions will they have next? The answers to those questions should be on pages easily accessible from your homepage. With a smooth, intuitive flow of information, visitors quickly start viewing your brand as approachable and convenient. In the realm of mental health, where many patients feel vulnerable and confused, this positive first impression is essential.
If your site’s structure anticipates the needs of prospective patients, they’ll have an easier time learning about your center and trusting your intentions to meet those needs. As a bonus, fostering a positive user experience is a nice boost to your SEO.1
Internal linking is also directly important for SEO because sites with a highly organized internal linking structure are easier for search engines to crawl and index. In turn, your site enjoys higher rankings on the search engine results page (SERP) so you reach more leads.2
2. Design Your Site to Look Just as Good on Smartphones as Desktops
A website that works great on a desktop doesn’t necessarily work well on a phone. There are plenty of sites out there with illegible text, inaccessible menus, or poor loading times when visited on a smartphone. With 55% of web traffic coming from mobile devices, you’re missing out on a huge share of prospective patients if your site doesn’t work and look great on a smartphone.3
Just as importantly, consistency and a professional appearance across digital platforms tell patients you’ll be consistent and professional when providing them with mental health care.
Site responsiveness is also important for SEO since Google typically crawls and indexes the mobile version of a website.4 This means your ranking on the SERP will only be as good as your mobile site allows—even if your desktop site is stellar.
3. Take the Guesswork Out of Web Design with A/B Testing
There’s quite a bit of advice available on how to build trust through mental health web design, but there’s no substitute for real-world data from your actual visitors. Luckily, this valuable data is readily accessible. All you have to do is set up some A/B tests, which randomly direct visitors to different versions of your site.
Say you want to know how to get visitors to return to your site again and again—a prerequisite for instilling a sense of trust. An A/B test allows you to set up multiple versions of the page, perhaps with different color schemes, or different descriptions of your brand’s values. You’ll quickly gather data revealing how many repeat visitors each version earns, as well as other performance metrics.5 After a series of A/B tests, you’ll feel confident knowing you’ve perfectly honed your site to authentically communicate what your mental health brand is all about.
Acting on these best practices is easier said than done. For help creating an intuitive linking structure, a standout mobile site, or A/B tests to gain insight into repeat visitors, a mental health marketing agency makes all the difference. Dreamscape Marketing can help. Schedule a strategy session with us by calling 888.307.7304.
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