Julianna
In today’s digital age, having a robust online presence is essential for any healthcare or wellness practice. Whether you are a massage, physio or occupational therapist, a clinical counsellor, naturopath, nutritionist, fitness trainer, or health services provider of any type, your website serves as the first point of contact for potential clients and plays a crucial role in establishing your credibility, professionalism and ability to help clients achieve better health outcomes.
A well-designed health and wellness website not only attracts new clients but also enhances the overall user experience, making it easier for visitors to find the information they need, schedule appointments and ultimately get the help they need take control of their well-being so they can live better lives. This article will delve into the key components and best practices for creating an effective health, wellness or clinic website that not only meets the needs of your clients but also helps you grow your practice.
Make a Great First Impression
First interactions with potential and new clients are super important because it sets the tone for future interactions and influences their lasting perception of your brand. Putting effort into creating a positive one will increase credibility in your practice and ability to help, which is essential for establishing ongoing customer relationships and even referrals – especially in the more personal space of wellness and health services.
Look Professional: Your health, wellness or clinic website should be clean, coherent (organized and logical), and professional in its visual appearance. Think of your website as your digital meet-and-greet or handshake, you want to make a great impression while remaining authentic. We recommend using high-quality images and, if possible, original ones of your business, team, and services in practice. Invest in a well designed logo, and maybe even a video introduction to set the tone.
Utilize Consistent Branding: Consistent, well executed branding can help in establishing a strong market presence, communicating professionalism and quality, which is particularly important in the healthcare sector where patients seek reliable and competent care. Stick to a consistent colour scheme and font style to help build a recognizable brand identity.
View Wix’s selection of professionally designed Health Website templates for options that follow these best practices, with the features you need to run your clinic such as scheduling, automated reminders and more.
Have User-Friendly Navigation
User-friendly website navigation can make or break a website for prospective clients. Have you ever had an experience where you were researching services or a potential provider, and you couldn’t find the information you wanted, or repeatedly run into error pages, dead links or content that didn’t match the expectation? Frustrating, right? Good navigation and content organization enables visitors to efficiently find the information they need, which increases confidence in your professionalism; moreover, it supports better SEO performance by helping search engines understand the structure and content of the site.
Keep It Simple: An easy-to-navigate menu at the top of your homepage is essential. Visitors should be able to find what they need without any hassle, so descriptively name your menu items. Also consider implementing a site search to allow users to zero-in on content by keyword.
Mobile-Friendly: Ensure your website looks great on all devices—phones, tablets, and desktops. Most people will visit your site on their phones, at least initially, so make sure it’s mobile-friendly. Most website creation platforms fulfil this requirement automatically, requiring little to no work from you.
Wix’s 10 Website Navigation Tips for a Smooth User Experience and The Good’s Website Navigation: 10 Conversion Tips & Winning Examples are two awesome, easy to follow resources to help you nail user-friendly navigation.
Use Compelling Calls to Action (CTAs)
The CTA’s you have on your clinic, therapy or healthcare website matter because they guide users towards the desired actions you want them to take, such as: “Book an Appointment” or “Complete our Intake Form,” or simply “Ask a Question”. Writing effective CTAs enhance user experience by providing clear direction and reducing confusion. They also increase conversion rates by encouraging users to take actions that align with your business goals.
Consistent Messaging and CTAs: Your CTAs should be consistent throughout the site. Whether it’s “Book Now”, “Schedule Your Appointment,” or “Join our Mailing List”, keep it uniform to guide visitors seamlessly.
Visible and Attractive: Place your CTAs where they can’t be missed in consistent locations from page to page, such as in the header or hero section. Make sure they are clear and prominent in their design with eye-catching colors to draw attention.
Follow Best Practices for Online Scheduling and Booking
Do a thorough comparison to make sure the website building platform you choose for your health and wellness business has all the features you need in a scheduling platform – from both a business and client perspective. Capabilities you should consider include appointment selection on an online calendar, shared calendar and management tools for team members, customizable intake forms, different options for sending reminders, and the ability to offer waitlists.
Prioritize Streamlined Scheduling: Integrate a user-friendly online booking system that allows clients to schedule appointments with just a few clicks. Having a fully autonomous booking system opens the window for more online bookings because prospective clients can see your availability and book themselves without interrupting their or your schedule.
Implement Automated Reminders: Reduce no-shows with automated email or SMS reminders. Once again, this not only helps you but also provides a better experience for your clients by allowing them to reply to your notifications, confirming, cancelling or rescheduling.
Optimize Your Clinic or Therapy Website to Increase Prospects
Prospective clients are more likely to reach out to healthcare or wellness service providers in the top few or first page of search engine results, so implementing a solid SEO strategy is essential. While there’s always a lot you can do when it comes to SEO, nailing these fundamentals will give you the best ROI on your work.
Create Engaging, Well Formatted Content: Keep your audience in mind as you craft your content in terms of tone, demographics, motivations, etc., so your content resonates with their values, needs and goals. Your tone for health and wellness content should be confident, reassuring, helpful and knowledgable. Focus on writing clear, compelling, descriptive (but not overly technical) content that answers known questions about your clinic, services, etc., particularly on the core pages of your website such as your homepage, services page, booking, rates and about us pages.
Double down on having good, consistent formatting. Clear titles, subject headers and well content improves user experience, engagement, “findability”, SEO and the overall effectiveness of a website.
Read Wix’s 10 Tips for Creating Website Content that Drives Traffic for a great overview of where
Describe Your Services in Detail: Clearly describe the services you offer, including what clients can expect during their visits, as well as anything unique or different that your health or wellness business offers. Knowing what to expect from an appointment helps manage expectations and reduces anxiety for new clients.
Choose and Integrate Relevant Keywords: Choose relevant keywords and phrases that describe your services and that prospective clients might use to search for those services. Use them not only throughout your written website content, but image file names, ALT text, etc., to help improve search engine rankings and attract more organic traffic, but incorporate them with care and relevance so they feel coherent with your content. Explore tools like MOZ’s Keyword Research Guide to help zero-in on the keywords and phrases you want to incorporate.
Internal Linking and Backlinks: Internal linking of relevant content across different pages of your website helps boost your website’s visibility and rankings on Google, in addition to aiding in Google’s finding, indexing, and comprehension of the pages on your site. Aim to also obtain a few backlinks, if possible, from other authoritative websites or directories; backlinks are akin to a recommendation in the algorithm, signalling trustworthiness.
Emphasize Local SEO: If you have a physical location, optimize for local search by including location-specific keywords like your city or neighbourhood name and setting up (and maintaining!) a Google My Business profile.
Showcase Testimonials, Trust Signals and Reviews
Health related services are highly relational and personal, therefore reviews and testimonials can make a big difference by giving a prospective client the confidence and reassurance they need to try a new practitioner or mode of therapy.
Feedback and Success Stories – New clients and prospective ones are more likely to trust providers who are genuinely endorsed by others, especially in fields where trust is paramount like healthcare services. Sharing positive testimonials and success stories validate the practitioner and/or clinic’s expertise in what they do, legitimacy, and quality of care, increasing confidence in potential clients and alleviating anxiety.
Trust Signals – Trust marks, seals, third-party logos, etc., can also help assure users of your credibility and legitimacy. These will vary depending on your industry and expertise, but generally encompass any certifications, awards, recognitions and affiliations with professional, independent organizations.
Online Security – Lastly, including a link to your privacy policy and referencing any security measures you take to protect client data, if applicable, also provides reassurance especially if your website collects any personal information via secure forms or other applications.
External Reviews – While the focus of this article is how to craft your clinic website for success, don’t forget to also put effort into growing your Google Reviews. By encouraging customers to leave reviews on Google, you’re not only increasing the visibility of your business in search results, you’re building your reputation via a venue that people regard as more independent than the one you manage – your website.
Don’t Forget Accessibility & Inclusivity Best Practices
Attention to inclusivity and accessibility are important to prioritize for all businesses, especially those providing health and wellness services. Accessible websites not only help businesses reach a wider audience, they show that you value diversity and inclusion as a value and communicate something about your brand.
While related and ideally tackled together, accessible and intuitive design have different yet complementary objectives. Accessible design focuses on the outcome or end result of a design project, utlizing accessibility guidelines published by authoritative governmental and industry groups with the aim of helping people with disabilities access websites and other digital products effectively. Although inclusive design is closely related to accessibility, it’s more of a methodology for how to approach design rather than an outcome. It’s a process for creating a design that can be used by a diverse group of people.
If you’re newly creating or redesigning a healthcare, therapy, or clinic website, make sure you research and choose a website creation platform that prioritizes accessibility from the ground up. Wix, for example, has numerous accessibility settings, tools and features incorporated by default that comply with global Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 standards, in addition to an accessibility wizard and other resource guides.
Implement best practices for accessibility – There are many great resources available to help guide you; Nielsen Norman Group’s Usability Guidelines for Accessible Web Design and W3.org’s Designing for Web Accessibility are authoritative and excellent starting points. Features of accessible design such as high contrast colour ratios, captioning for videos, image/media alternatives, resizable text and more can make interfaces and websites better for everyone. Also, it’s okay to begin with low hanging “accessible” fruit; many accessibility updates are easy to implement, so begin by tackling those first, as well as prioritizing high traffic pages and core functions on your website such as your intake form or appointment scheduling.
Implement best practices for inclusivity – Inclusive design at its core focuses on being accessible to and usable by as many people as possible without requiring significant adaptation or specialized design. This means having your website be useable by users of all accessibilities, ages, cultures, economic circumstances, genders, educations, etc., as much as possible. By treating this as a principle for planning your website and content and addressing it wherever you can, you’ll increase your capacity to connect with a wider range of potential clients.
* * *
Creating a website that attracts and retains clients is crucial for any practitioner looking to grow their practice. By focusing on professional design, user-friendly navigation, compelling CTAs, and effective online scheduling, you can create a professional and effective user experience that increases trust as well as conversions. Additionally, optimizing your site for SEO, showcasing client testimonials, and prioritizing accessibility will help you reach a broader audience and build trust with potential clients. Remember, your website is often the first interaction a client has with your practice—make it count! With these tips, you’ll be well on your way to creating a clinic website that not only looks great but also drives growth and success for your practice.