Chiropractic Websites and Marketing

When you’re setting up a chiropractic website you’ll want to find a template that accurately reflects the personality of your clinic and maximizes patient conversion rates — the percentage of visitors who “convert” into patients by scheduling an appointment or requesting information. It’s often a balancing act between features and minimalism and I strongly recommending leaning toward simplicity. Nothing scares away visitors faster than difficult navigation and too many choices. In fact, this is such a prevalent problem in chiropractic websites and marketing that there’s a term for it: “decision paralysis.” This is a simplistic way of describing a psychological phenomenon where people will freeze, like deer in headlights, if you present them with too many options simultaneously. Ideally you should present visitors with no more than 4 major decisions at once and clearly tell a visitor what they should do next. For instance, if you have a chiropractic website introduction video on your homepage, you should end the video by saying something like “and now I’d encourage you to take a look at our service and give us a call to schedule your initial exam.” Always end with a call-to-action that clearly describes what a visitor should do next.

Contrary to popular belief, people actually like being told what to do because it gives them clear direction and eliminates insecurity — so don’t hesitate to be assertive.

With millions of users visiting the site each day, Facebook has easily become one of themost important destinations on the internet.

1. The Audience Is Vast
No matter what an individual or business specializes in, signing up with Facebook cangreatly help in reaching a potential customers. Since millions of people visit Facebookdaily, it is likely that thousands of people interested in finding a chiropractor will beaccessing Facebook every day. Potential patients in your area can easily find informationabout your chiropractic practice through this accessible format.

2. It Shows the Ability to Adjust
Some doctors do not believe that they need to change with the times in order to maintaina place in the public eye. To them, a physical location is enough, and nothing elseis necessary. However, to take on such a view can be dangerous and cause a loss ofpatients. People like to know that the doctors they deal with are willing to adjust tomodern expectations. Creating a blog, maintaining a website, and utilizing socialnetworks are excellent ways to demonstrate your ability to keep up with technology.

3. There Is a Real Human Connection
Facebook is not just about posting interesting images or commenting on how the daywas spent. For a number of users, it is also a way to stay connected with their lovedones and coworkers. Although they may not be in the same room or state, they can stillcommunicate in their own way. It can also be a way for them to find out about medicalservices in their area. Should a chiropractor set up a Facebook account, they will be ableto talk to patients directly. Should somebody have a question they can have it answeredright away. There is less room for confusion and dissatisfaction for all involved. Patientsappreciate these personalized, human connections when they’re looking for a doctor.

One of the great things about using the Internet to find information is that you have such a wide spectrum from which to search. Although many find great benefit from using such a medium there are ways to improve the search; one such way is by including bios in the website. Bios are a great word to optimize and even higher SEO rate because you’re able to touch on the various specialties of both products and staff. Aside from the SEO optimization aspect there are other reasons to incorporate bios into your website.

Consider shopping in a face to face capacity, isn’t one of the aspects you appreciate the most that of knowing who you’re dealing with? When you incorporate bios into your website, you’re giving your site that same friendly neighborhood feel, which in turn helps to build your customer’s loyalty as well as giving your site a stellar reputation because of the word of mouth advertising you will receive. Although the internet may well be more advanced than your local neighborhood market, you can still give your site a feel of the friendly and helpful atmosphere that makes these types of places so attractive to people.

The trick is to use the bios in a skillful and informative way to help utilize the SEO benefits of your business website. One of the first places to begin is a brief bio of the business itself; its history, what it specializes in and what services and products you are able to offer. The next step would be a brief bio of the individuals who perform the work and what they’re various expertise and length of time in that field is, keep in mind to add a human element to these bios to help give your staff a personal feel for potential customers. This can help give a boost to your site as well as gain more people who in turn, can easily become more customers.

We just ran across something interesting, a chiropractor in Los Angeles who received a negative review on several sites like Yelp and decided to post it prominently in his office. His rationale was that he’s willing to fess up when he makes a mistake and he wants to be 100% honest with his patients. The review itself was pretty ridiculous: “I didn’t like that his office was near a liquor store and I didn’t like that he seemed to happy and talkative” (paraphrasing).

By posting the negative review in his office, his existing patients immediately came to his defense, laughed about the ludicrous nature of the review, and became more loyal supporters of the doctor. This was a brilliant move on the chiropractor’s part because it spun a negative situation into something overwhelmingly positive — it just took an adjustment of attitude.

The best chiropractic websites have a few things in common: clean design, high quality content, and unique personality. Within these parameters, they vary dramatically. For instance some chiropractic websites will emphasize personal injury, while others focus on wellness, but they all include those three core traits (design, content, personality). The websites that fail also share common traits. For instance, many of the low quality websites are cluttered, disorganized, brightly colored, and do not include photos of the doctors or staff. They also regularly include spinning images and other gimmicks — which tend to irritate and disorient prospective patients.

It’s also important that you ensure your chiropractic website is designed using web standard coding. Many chiropractic website companies use outdated code which ranks poorly in search engines and can be incompatible with some internet browsers. Outdated code also tends to look “old” and untrustworthy, so it’s important that you stay up to date and redesign your website every 2-3 years. At this time, web standards dictate that you us XHTML compliant code, CSS, and minimal amount of Flash. We’re at the cusp of moving into HTML5 — but I’d advise against building a site exclusively in HTML5 at this time because it’s not compatible with some of the older internet browsers, which can make your website impossible to view by some people.

Another word of warning — avoid Flash whenever possible. You can create some pretty slick looking animations and designs in Flash but it’s not compatible with many Apple products, including the iPad and iPhone. This eliminates a big chunk of the mobile audience. Additionally, Flash cannot be indexed by Google, which means your Flash content won’t help your search engine rank. It’s always hard when I have to tell a business owner that their website (which they sometimes have spent thousands on) is worthless because it won’t rank on searches. Don’t make their mistake!

It’s also important that, as a chiropractor, you tell your personal story and make yourself likeable. The majority of people choose their chiropractor based on whether or not they like them and whether or not they treat their condition (in that order). You need to make yourself appear approachable, empathetic, honest, and memorable. It’s especially important that you stand out from the other chiropractors in town, because people will typically look at 3-4 different chiropractic websites before making a decision. You need to be distinct enough that they’ll remember you and go back to your website after looking at the other doctors.

Finally, make sure it’s easy for patients to schedule an appointment. You can either offer your phone number on every page or you can create an appointment form on your website that allows patients to choose preferred times and dates. Ideally you would employ both of these options on your website.