A few years back, somebody likely told you that you needed an online presence to attract new patients. So you went out and found someone to develop your website. You focused on making an attractive page that told a little bit about your practice and it would need a minimal amount of maintenance. That was that.
by Mike Whitmer in Digital Marketing on Sunday, June 19, 2016
Not so fast. With an increasing number of social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, updating your website has become more important than ever. People are searching online for solutions – even chiropractic ones. Having an active page means you move to the top of the search engines as well as keeping the attention of potential patients once they click on your page.
So now what?
The first step in a revamp of your webpage is to fully understand what it is you want to accomplish from your website. This will take some time and research. To get started take a look at how you manage your website. If you had someone develop your site, it is likely they provided you access to a content management system (CMS) where you or someone in your office can make changes to text and images.
- What changes can you make to your website without hiring outside help?
- Who is in charge of making changes?
- Do they understand what their role is and the information that should be on the website?
Once you have an idea of your capabilities of how to manage the site inside the office, you’ll need to figure out what you want your updated website to do.
This is the fun part. Go to websites you visit frequently and figure out what it is that you like about it. Is it content? Is it a fun app? Now go to other chiropractic pages and do the same thing. Keep a list of what you like and what you don’t like. This will help you prioritize where to begin.
From here you will focus on:
- Strategy. How does this fit into your overall marketing/communications strategies? How will you tie it to any social media activities? What is it that I want to accomplish with my website?
- Content. What do you want to say? How often do you want to say it? Will you put pictures up?
- Usability. How will your patients interact? Can they easily find the information they need?
- Style. How do you want it to look? Colors and fonts should match up with what you are doing in other areas of marketing and advertising?
- Execution. Can you do this alone, should you hire an outside resource or maybe it should be something in between?
These are all big topics, and throughout the next several months we’ll focus on each bullet in detail. But until then, you can start evaluating your website.
Good luck!
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About the Author
Mike Whitmer
Mike Whitmer, assistant vice president of NCMIC's Chiropractic Insurance Programs, has more than 25 years' experience in the business world to share with D.C.s who are starting their chiropractic careers. By day, Mike leads the corporate relations team at NCMIC Group, Inc., teaching at chiropractic colleges about business practices and risk management, and attending trade shows and homecoming events. Mike is also the cofounder of a property management company and a restoration firm that have provided his "real world" experience on writing business plans and dealing with small business finance and operations.
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