So you’re not sure what pages you need on your new website. Most dental websites are brochure sites, meaning that they contain information that would go in a traditional tri-fold brochure, answering who, what, where, when, and why.
Home
Sometimes titled Welcome, a homepage should include a brief introduction about your practice. It could feature your most popular services and technology, a brief mission statement, office tour, and links to the pages you like best on your website.
About
About can be about the dentist, the team, and/or the office. It’s the second most visited page on a dental website, so it’s important. I recommend that doctors include a professional picture, a team photo, and a family photo. Your bio should be brief and have bullet points. Don’t go into the same detail you would in your curriculum vitae. Most people don’t care. You need to appear educated, capable, and friendly. You can include a team page with photos and brief (one or two paragraph) bios. The about section is a good place for mission and vision statements, as well. You might want a dropdown navigation so that you can include doctor, team, mission, and a community involvement page. The community page should feature pictures of your team volunteering or participating in local events.
Services
If you are interested in search engine optimization, and you should be, the services page should be a dropdown menu with a separate page for each service. You can include…
…a section on technology under services, as well. FAQs, before-and-after photos, and testimonials work well on services pages.
New Patients (optional)
This section can include PDF forms for your new patients, as well as insurance, payment, and financing information. You might offer your office hours and email address in this section.
Gallery (optional)
Your smile gallery should feature YOUR patients, not stock photos. The best galleries have testimonials, close up before-and-after shots, and an after headshot. You can post videos of patient testimonials on this page, as well. A case description with links to the services mentioned is also a great idea. Your gallery can be a flash animation or static photos.
Patient Education (omit)
I think patient ed is redundant on a website. Your services pages should be your patient ed pages.
Blog
For SEO, for constant contact with your patients, and to keep your site looking fresh, a blog is a must. Do not, however, start a blog and abandon it. Hire Identiwrite Creative to write blogs for you if you do not have time.
Contact Us
This page is very important. Your phone number, email, physical address, and practice name should be primary. Then add an interactive Google map, and make sure the map is accurate. You can include driving directions or a bus schedule, and if parking is an issue, be sure to let your patients know. It’s a wise idea to include an office tour or exterior photo so that people recognize your office when they see it in person. Beneath the map, type up a list of cities you serve and just drop it in there for SEO.
What’s NOT important? Email response forms. People just don’t fill out “contact us” forms very often, at least on dental websites. Do, however, make sure that your email link is on every page, along with your practice’s phone number. Patient education pages and FAQs are really just filler, so you can leave those off, as well. Do not let “coming soon” pages linger for more than a week. If you don’t have the material to fill them up, leave them out of the navigation for now.
What other pages might I need? It’s nice to have a page for parents and for kids, especially if you’re a family dentist. These should be separate from the services pages. The parents page can talk about how you make dentistry easy for busy families, and your policy for seeing children. The kids’ page can have videos and games, photos of your play area, and even color sheets to print.
Testimonials is a good page if you don’t incorporate it with before-and-after photos in the gallery. Whether you use photos of notes your patients sent you, or you prefer video testimonials, be sure to add a typed version. Search engines only read live text, not videos and images.
