5 Elements Of An Effective Practice Website

An effective website is key to building a thriving private practice in the digital age.

According to Pew Research, 80% of internet users look online for health information, making it the third most popular online pursuit following email and using a search engine. Additionally, 44% of internet users look online for information about doctors or other health professionals.

Since the majority of people are looking for your services online, your website is the heart of your professional web presence. All other online efforts should focus primarily on directing potential clients to your website where they will get to know who you are and how you can help them. Your website is your first impression, your "billboard", and your best chance to build trust with potential clients. I suggest these 5 C's when building your private practice website.

The 5 C's of an effective website:

1) Clean design

Overall design feel should look uncluttered and cohesive. Here's an example of a clean looking practice website from The Healing Group. When designing your site focus on the following:

• Use only 1-2 type fonts
• Select a cohesive color scheme
• Avoid DIY look
• Visually appealing to your ideal client

2) Clear Navigation

Is your site navigation user friendly? Can visitors quickly find what they are looking for? When I redesigned my practice website I selected the order of navigation buttons based on the Google Analytics statistics pages views. Then I put the navigation buttons in order according to what the site's previous visitors were looking for. Here were the top 5

• Home
• Meet Therapists
• Services
• Appointments
• About Us

3) Compelling copy

Does the text on your website pages accurately describe your practice  and your services? Does the copy engage your visitors and give them a feel for who you are? Here are a few tips to write more compelling copy:

• Speak in first person
• Answer your potential client’s pain
• Highlight the benefits of your services
• Conversational writing style is the new "professional"
• Use keywords throughout your text on website pages. Keywords are  words or phrases that describe your services that ideal clients would likely type into a search to find the services you provide.

4) Contact Information

One of the biggest mistakes therapists make is making potential clients work too hard to find contact information. Here are some suggestions to make sure that potential clients can easily contact you. Keep in mind that the primary  goal of a website is to get potential clients to become your clients. Make sure that you include your contact information and your location on every page.

5) Consistent Content

It's important to give visitors a reason to come back to your website on a regular basis. Creating valuable content makes your site a valuable resource, increases traffic, and helps build your clientele. Here are some examples of types of content that I create regularly on my private practice website:

• Blog Articles
• Videos
• Audio (mp3s, podcasts)
• Social/Visual (graphics, pictures)
• Newsletter

Take a look at your practice website. If you have incorporated these 5 elements then you're in good shape! If not, look at where you can improve. Maybe you can add "Spruce up my private practice website" to your New Year's Resolution list.

Feel free to post your practice website link in the comments below and ask for feedback from colleagues. I encourage you to give feedback to other practitioners on their practice websites.

3 Things Google Analytics Can Teach You About Your Private Practice

Guest post by Liz Lockard, a self-confessed Google Analytics geek who loves helping small businesses get more out of their marketing data.

Do you have a website for your private practice? If so, you can’t pass up the best free marketing insights tool for your business - Google Analytics.

If you don’t already have it installed, go do that first (check out my mini Google Analytics setup tutorial for that).

Sure Google Analytics can tell me about my website, you say, but what can it tell me about my practice?

Here’s just three things you can learn about your practice from Google Analytics.

1) Where in the world are your prospects from?

Google Analytics can tell you exactly where every visitor to your website is visiting from. When logged in, just head to Standard Reporting - Audience - Demographics - Location.

You’ll get a map that looks a lot like this one:

You can view as top-level as on what continent and as specific as in which city your visitors are located. What could that mean for your practice? If you were considering expanding your practice into a neighboring state, Google Analytics can help guide that decision by giving you data on which state sends your site the most visitors, or which state sends you the most engaged visitors. City-wise it could help you target local in-state marketing efforts.

2) What is your most popular content?

Do you have a blog or host other articles on your site? If so, Google Analytics can tell you exactly which page or post is getting the most visits. Simply head to Standard Reporting - Content - Site Content - All Pages.

You’ll get a list that looks like this one:

You can see exactly which pieces of content on your site are most popular by visits, time on site, and a whole host of other metrics.

What could this mean for your practice? Your most popular content is a great indicator of what your audience finds most interest and what will be popular in the future. You could develop a follow up piece or similar pieces of content for future blog posts or articles. You could extend the topic into your weekly newsletter, or use the topic in other marketing channels.

3) Which referral source is sending the most traffic?

If you’ve ever pursued a specific marketing channel only to wonder if those new patients or newsletter sign ups actually came from there or somewhere else, you’ll understand the importance of this Google Analytics capability. Simply head to Standard Reporting - Traffic Sources - Sources - All Traffic.

You’ll get a list that looks like this one:

You can see exactly which traffic source is sending you the most traffic (or most engaged) - whether that’s search traffic, email marketing traffic, social media traffic, or other sites you’ve written for or advertised with.

What could this mean for your practice? You can finally stop wondering what’s working! And finally start making data-backed decisions for your marketing efforts and budget. If you didn’t see a single click-through on an ad you ran for 3 months on a popular site - pull it! If you saw a lot of engaged visitors coming from a guest post you wrote for another site, consider writing for them again! This is one of my favorite insights from Google Analytics - being able to actually evaluate marketing efforts.

(bonus points if you measure this traffic based on conversion - but that requires that you have goals set up)

What Do You Think?

Do you have Google Analytics set up for your site? Ever use it to pull insights for your business? Did you find this article helpful? Let me know in the comments!

About The Author:

Liz Lockard is a self-confessed Google Analytics geek who loves helping small businesses get more out of their marketing data. If you enjoyed this article and are interested in more ways of how you can use Google Analytics to up your marketing game, you can sign up for more free training and get on the first-to-know list for her upcoming course Google Analytics: The Missing Manual here. Follow her on Twitter @lizlockard.

(c) Can Stock Photo

6 Reasons I'm Obsessed With Wordpress

WordPress is a fantastic platform for your private practice website. Originally a blogging platform, it's commonly used for websites because it's user friendly, functional, and easy to customize. I'm completely "in love" with it. For clarification, I'm talking about WordPress.org that is installed on your web hosting system, not WordPress.com - a web-based blogging platform. Since I changed to WordPress about a year ago for my practice website, I've been able to create a more dynamic and interactive website with fresh content, social media interaction, and an integrated a blog.  So here's more about why I love WordPress:

1) You can be the webmaster

Even without knowing HTML, you can be the webmaster of your website with the ability to customize the function and appearance at any time. You can easily add or delete pages, change the color scheme, add blog posts, and customize the features at any time and from anywhere. Once I paid to have the basic WordPress site installed on my web host and had a few custom images made, I took over from there.

2) Free themes

WordPress allows you to "try on" different themes to your site with the click of a button. A "theme" is the skin of your site -- the format, colors, layout, etc. There are many free themes available, in addition to customized themes for a variety of fees. ThemeForest.net is a great site to explore variety in custom website themes.

3) Plugins and widgets galore

Plugins are tools that extend the functionality of your WordPress site and allow customization to your site. Widgets are WordPress plugins "that add visitor visual and interactivity options and features, such as sidebar widgets for post categories, tag clouds, navigation, search, etc." (WordPress.org)

Here are a few of my favorites:

• YouTube Videos -- feeds YouTube channel to websites
• Author Bio -- shows customized bio at the bottom of each blog post
• Amazon Associate -- integrates a bookshelf of our recommended books with a link to buy on Amazon.com.
• Google Analytics -- tracks visitor information.
• Constant Contact API -- integrates our newsletter sign up on the website.
• SexyBookmarks (by Shareaholic) -- add social media share links to each blog post.
• Share and Follow -- adds social media links bar on pages.

4) Easy to navigate

OK, that one's partially true. Though navigating the WordPress dashboard can be a bit overwhelming at first, once you're familiar with it, you can easily navigate it. For example, my juliehanks.com and wasatchfamilytherapy.com sites are built on WordPress, so when I started writing for PsychCentral (also built on WordPress) it was easy to jump right in.

5) It's cheap!

After paying for domain registration, web hosting service, and basic site installation costs, there are minimal expenses to update and maintain your WordPress website. I will occasionally hire a web designer to consult or add elements that are beyond my abilities, but that is the exception. I used to pay around $60 a month for a website service but I quickly outgrew the options they provided. Even with the start up costs, WordPress has been a cheaper option and much more fun to create a dynamic practice website.

6) Integrated blog

One of the reasons I started looking  for a better website platform was that my current site platform didn't allow for an integrated blog. I had a blog on an external blogging site, but hated sending my visitors away from my private practice website in order to read my blog. Since WordPress is a blogging platform, visitors can stay on our site and read blog posts.

What platform do you use for your practice website?

Are there any other WordPress lovers out there?