With the entrance of Yelp, Facebook, and Google Places for business, some dentists believe that it isn’t necessary to have a dental practice website anymore.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
What is quickly changing, however, is how people are accessing your dental website.
Over 150 million U.S. adults own a smartphone. And, it is reported that for 28% of these users, a mobile device is their primary choice for accessing the Internet. Dentists’ need for having a modern, up-to-date mobile-ready dental website has never been greater.
Here are 9 reasons why you still need a dental website –
1. SEO.
Having a dental website makes it easier for potential dental patients to find your practice on the Internet, especially if you are a specialist. Your website can showcase different dental treatments and share that information with search engines, while social media websites only offer up your dental practice name when people use search.
2. 24/7
A dental website will promote your dental practice 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Even when you’re sleeping your dental website could be working for you. Think about that dental patient who might be up late at night because of tooth pain and goes searching the Internet for answers Don’t you want your name to come up? And when your name does come up, don’t you want your website telling that potential patient exactly how you can help them?
3. Referrals
Having a dental website makes it easy for your current patients to refer new people to your dental practice. They can just send people to your website instead of trying to explain everything they know about your dental practice.
4. Reputation management
A dental website allows you to project an image of your dental practice that you like and not have it be associated with negative events beyond your control. If Facebook makes headlines because they were hacked and email addresses were stolen, then you don’t have to worry that your online presence might be compromised.
5. Trust
Your dental website builds trust in your community, with strangers online and among your peers. You have the ability to add testimonials and feature some of your best work.
6. Not everyone uses social media
Not everyone belongs to or visits many of the social media sites on the Internet. Having a dental website is the best option for reaching a larger audience.
7. People are less distracted
When people use the Internet to search for your dental practice over relying on social media websites, you are getting a potential dental patient who is interested in your practice and is not being distracted by 100 other messages flashing before them on a screen.
8. No advertisements
You control your message without advertisements from third parties, or your competition. Your website is all about you and your dental practice and no one can buy space there unless you approve it first.
9. Tracking
You get web tracking statistics based on your website and what you have to offer verses how the social media site is performing, or what limited statistics they can offer you.
Clearly, having a dental website isn’t enough anymore. Your dental website has to be easily adaptable to meet the demands of ever-changing technology and mobile-based web access. Having a dental website that is mobile-ready is a great way to expand your dental practice to new patients.
Your mobile-ready dental website can reach more local people and you don’t have to worry that they are missing your message because they haven’t signed into Facebook for the last month.
The Internet Dental Alliance dental websites include a full set of specially-designed smart mobile marketing pages. This means that every person with a mobile smart phone, iPad or other tablet can easily view your practice information or site from any location.
Click here to visit IDA to learn more about their mobile-ready websites for dentists.
