Aside from perhaps social media, your website is usually the first port of call for new and existing clients. Therefore, maybe it’s time to stop and consider whether your current website is doing its job effectively?
With a tough competitive marketplace and constant developments in online marketing and SEO, it’s important to ensure that you are not lagging behind in terms of website presence and quality.
To help with the evaluation process of your website, we have put together a checklist of questions below. These are all questions to ask yourself when looking at your website, to ensure that it is doing its job effectively in marketing your brand and ultimately creating more business for you.
Is the content on your website tailored to your target audience?
When it comes to your specific business, a customer in need of therapy will be experiencing a need for treatment. Therefore, it’s important that your website content addresses this point and offers clients a practical solution as immediately as possible.
Your website should do a good job in reassuring your target audience that you are a capable and experienced therapist with professional qualifications. And, it should also clearly speak about the issues your clients may be facing and how you propose to help with these issues. Is your range of treatments listed clearly in the navigation? Will the customer know instantly what treatment they need? These are all useful things to consider.
Is it easy for a customer to find your contact details online?
It might sound basic, but once a client is interested in contacting you, how easy is it for them to do so? You should have a page dedicated to contact details on the website, which ideally should have an address, phone number and email address listed. You might also want to consider adding your contact details to the header of each page of the website for ease.
Some websites use contact forms, where customers have to enter contact details and a message to be submitted. However, in general, people prefer to use telephone or email as their choice of communication. Especially when it comes to talking about personal health and wellbeing issues they may be experiencing.
Do you have a good selection of high-quality images on the site?
So many websites are let down by out-dated, poor-quality or stock images that don’t reflect the brand well.
Images break up big chunks of text and make things easier to digest for customers. But, they should also add value and form part of an effective content plan. As a therapist, you want your imagery to be consistent and professional. It needs to reflect the quality of your treatment and make customers feel comfortable before they book in to come and see you. It’s definitely worth considering commissioning a professional photographer or videographer to take images/videos of your premises and treatments in practice to make things more personal. You can also choose images from a good image library, for example: https://stock.adobe.com/uk/ if you need help in this you can contact us at healthhosts to help with your images
Is the site mobile responsive?
With a huge percentage of customers now browsing on mobiles and tablets, it’s essential that your website is mobile responsive. You can test your website manually by testing it on various viewport sizes to check if the content scales to fit correctly. You might find inconsistencies in colours, fonts or images in specific sizes.
Google also offers a quick test to see if it classes your website as mobile-friendly. Simply paste the URL of your website into the spacebar within the tool and enter. Within a few seconds Google will tell you if your website is mobile-friendly. If you find that your website is not responsive on mobile, it might be time to invest in some updates.
Do you regularly publish new and updated content?
Websites should not be static publications. They should be updated regularly with news, updates and information to keep your customers informed. If you haven’t updated your website for a while, then it’s worth checking each page to see if the information is still relevant or whether new content needs to be added. If you have a seasonal promotion or a special notice i.e about your Covid-19 restrictions, then these should be clear to view on the homepage.
Also, do you have a blog on the website that publishes frequent and relevant content? If not, then perhaps now is a good time to start. Not only do blog articles help with your SEO content strategy – targeting specific keywords. But, they also help to prove expertise and authenticity in your field of business. Something, which is especially important for therapists to show.
The above checklist features just a selection of factors that go into assessing whether a website is up to scratch or not. If you are not a particularly technical person or would like some advice on whether your website could benefit from some upgrades or improvements, then it might be a good idea to speak to a specialist who will advise you on options available.
