If you’re a startup dentist or one that wants to take your dental business to the next level, you most likely know you need to have a custom dental website that showcases your brand, gets found in the search engines and entices people to take action.
It can drive you crazy like our friend to the right when it comes to taking the time to research, interview and decide on a design company for your dental website. Don’t worry, in this article (please read the entire page) you will be armed with all the information you need to make a decision you’ll feel confident about moving forward.
For many dentists the website was almost an afterthought. It was the last thing you did before you opened your doors. Many I’ve talked to look for the cheapest provider to slap something up on the Internet. Those days are gone with the competitiveness of each city and google’s algorithms.
The goal of your dental website is to attract patients by getting your visitors to take action (fill out your schedule an appointment form or call your office). Every thought that goes into design, functionality, usability aesthetics and optimization should be to attain this goal of attracting more patients to your dental business.
There are hundreds of website designers and companies for dentists. There are the very large ones who will give you a cookie-cutter, non-branded stock website for a few hundred dollars down and then a hundred or so a month until you die.
Unfortunately, these under-performing websites are built using a template, and the content added is what we refer to as duplicate content, which means all of their clients (hundreds if not thousands) have the exact same content. Google penalizes you with this type of content, and even worse it is not written for conversions.
And lastly, these large companies own the website including the content, so when you’ve paid several thousands of dollars for a year or two and realize you want something better you have to start over. From scratch! All that money you spent was to “rent” the website from these big dental marketing behemoths.
Type in cheap dental website template and you’ll find thousands on the Internet for as little as $19. On the outside it looks fine. Some are even quite nice looking, but what really matters is what is underneath the website. This is a trap a lot of frustrated dentists fall in to. They have a few calls with web design companies and hear anywhere from the low thousands up to $15,000 or more for a custom dental website.
Does this sound familiar? How do you know who to pick and make the investment? It can be daunting and quite time-consuming.
Another option is to look for a local (or on the Internet) freelancer to do it. One problem with this approach is they may or may not have experience and knowledge in dentistry. If you take this approach it may not turn out as you’d hoped. You will have a website that may look okay but does not resonate with the web visitor looking to for a dentist and going to spend their hard-earned money.
This is a very common approach you’ll see when you land on a web design agency website. There will be 3 options. The template, the semi-custom and the custom.
The price range can be in the low thousands ($1500-$2500), then bump up to $3500-$5500, and on the high end up to $10,000-$15,000 for a full-blown custom website with all the bells and whistles.
This may make it difficult for you to choose and it will be hard for you to see the value difference in each one of them. The old saying, “you get what you pay for” might creep in and you go for the expensive one. Is that one really necessary? Go look at your local competitor’s websites. How good are they? Are they stunning, and rank high in google. What do they look like compared to your 3 options? Ask the design company to compare each one to your competitors and explain the difference between them.
What it comes down to is how you feel when interviewing the agency. Are they explaining their process in a way that makes sense and checks off all your boxes? Do you feel deep inside that investment cost is going to be worth it for your dental business?
Here I want to give you some questions to ask any design company to arm yourself with enough knowledge to make an informed decision that you can then sleep at night afterward.
These questions will arm you with the confidence to make the right decision. This will be a big purchase, but nothing like some of the dental equipment you put in your office.
Your are a business owner. You most likely want a thriving and growing dental business. To achieve this requires many moving parts all the time, but when it comes to your website, many times it’s the first impression a potential patient experiences with your practice. And as they say…you can’t take back a first impression.
So instead of looking at your new website as a cost, look at it as an investment in the future growth of your business. Here’s one way to look at it. We know from the ADA and other sources a new patient even the first year can be worth $1,000 or more, and lifetime can be between $5,000-$15,000. For ONE new patient!
The lifetime of your website before you’ll need to refresh or redo it will be 3-5 years. So take the investment and divide it by the number of years you’ll have it, to get a yearly cost number.
Now, how many new patients do you need to get to make back that investment? Typically one lifetime patient will likely pay for your custom dental website. This thought process should ease your mind as to the cost of your new website.
It all comes down to value. How serious are you at being the top producing dental business in your city? Like I said earlier…look at your top competitors Look at their websites thoroughly. Make sure your new website is better than theirs in every way.
I hope you found this article valuable. Here at The Dental Boost, we strive to be your marketing partner. Collaborating with you to build a strong bond for years to come.
