Using your website to expand your client base

Optometric websites need to be accessible and professional to get the results you want—in other words, to reach out to, inform, educate, and generally make life easier for current and potential customers. While a simple website is better than no website at all, a dynamic, visually enticing, and user-friendly website can significantly increase your customer base. Here are some tips I’ve gleaned from optometric websites that do it right:

Usability is key. How user-friendly is your website? This should be at the front of your mind, especially given your profession. As an optometrist, a significant number of your patients likely have some kind of vision impairment. Is the “look” of your site helping them? Make sure that the appearance of your site won’t alienate current and potential customers.

Think like a patient. Include everything you’d expect to find if you were a patient. Amazingly enough, some websites leave out crucial information such as hours, directions, and services offered. Don’t be one of these websites. Go the extra mile by soliciting feedback prior to your website going “live.” This way, you can make sure you’re not missing anything.

Give some history. This is a great way to build trust with your patients. Include some general information about your practice, like how it started. Biographies of key staff are also a nice touch.

Make it public. Do people know about you? If not, you can use the internet to resolve this issue. Get your name out there through savvy search engine optimization—in other words, build your site so that you have a chance of appearing when someone searches for “YourTown Optometrist” in Google or Yahoo. If you don’t know how to do this, Google “search engine optimization” for a start. You should also consider buying some pay-per-click advertising to drive other traffic to your site. In a short time, you’ll be able to tell which ads are most cost-effective.

Offer incentives to visit. Your patients should know about your website and have reasons to check it out. Including special offers, an opt-in newsletter, and other services will go a long way to making this happen. If you offer coupons on your website, for instance, they can’t get lost like their paper counterparts. This is a cost-effective way to reach out to your customers.

Push the envelope. Offering “extras” through special features on your website is a definite plus. Think about what your client base would benefit from, and make it happen on your website. Perhaps it’s an interactive feature like a glasses suggestion tool, or real-time online appointment scheduling. Your patients will greatly appreciate such creative—and helpful—flourishes.

Optometric websites can be many things. At their best, they can help you build your client base and secure a vibrant future for your practice. Take a look at your website today and ask yourself: Am I giving my customers what they want?

Increasing Revenue With A Modern Optometric Marketing Plan

You want to increase revenue, but how? The answer is simple, really: enhance your optometric marketing plan. Okay, but how do you do that?

A clue lies in the habits of today’s young people. They spend more time surfing the Internet than they do reading magazines, watching TV, or readings newspapers. But what does this mean for your practice, and your optometric marketing in general?

Simply put, the traditional marketing strategies employed by optometrists—reaching patients through the yellow pages and radio and television advertisements—are on their way out. If you want to reach customers in today’s day and age, you have to use the Internet. You can still use those traditional methods to connect with patients—in fact, some of them might still expect it, to some degree—but no contemporary optometric marketing plan is complete without using the Internet.

Your first stop should be Google. It’s the most popular search engine, and it’s how people will find you. Your website needs to be one of the first a prospective patient sees when he or she is looking for an optometrist in your area. Additionally, you should make sure that your website is listed in dmoz.org and Yahoo directories. Bottom line: if your patients can find you, they’re more likely to call you and make an appointment.

As far as your website goes, put up some interesting optometry-related articles that you think your patients would like to read. Send out an e-newsletter with coupons and an interesting article or two. You can then increase traffic to your website by taking your newsletters and placing them on article database sites like e-zinearticles.com.

Strategies like these are easy to implement and will make a big difference. The sooner you’re up on the web in a noticeable way, the quicker your optometric marketing plan will take flight.

Using Optometric Websites to Expand Your Practice

Want to see an instant boost to your practice? Designing a dynamic, user-friendly website is just the ticket. You might have a basic website right now, and that’s fine—but it you want to attract more patients in today’s world, your website should mirror the content of the best optometric websites.

Here are a few tips based off of what other optometric websites have done well:

“User-Friendly” is the Key. Many of your visitors might have varying degrees of vision impairment, so this should be a given. A user-friendly environment is what your patients will expect—and what will keep them at your site.

Address the Basics. More than a few new websites (and some established ones) leave out critical basic information that you’ll definitely not want to miss. Your practice’s name, location, and hours of operation should be plainly visible on your homepage. Your patients will be expecting it, so definitely include it.

Talk Yourself Up. Include biographical information about you, the history of your practice, and other key staff. This will allow your patients to get a good feel for your practice in the comfort of their own home.

Advertise. Make your name known, especially in your area. People in your area who are looking for an optometrist should know about you. Increase your reach through search engine optimization so that your site will appear in local searches on Google, Yahoo, and other popular search engines. Signing up with Yahoo Local and Google Maps won’t hurt, either.

Give Patients an Incentive to Visit. Incentives are key. They often make the difference between the “on-the-fence” patient and the “newly acquired” patient. Including special offers, coupons, an opt-in newsletter, and other services that people will find useful will help your patient base expand.

Go the Extra Mile. There are many features you can add to your website that will be of use to your patients. Think about interactive features like a glasses suggestion tool or real-time online scheduling—both can be added fairly easily, and they’ll help your patients immeasurably. With extra touches like these, your website will truly stand out.

Successful optometric websites focus on the patient and provide him or her with needed services. If you follow the steps I’ve outlined above, you’ll have no problem establishing yourself as the go-to professional in your area.

Building Your Practice through Optometry Websites

Our patients have spoken, and they’re increasingly saying that they’d like to do their business on the internet. You probably already have a website for your optometry practice, but are you getting the most out of it? I have found that a few simple modifications can turn most optometry websites into excellent resources for patients.

There are many considerations to make when building a website for your practice, but I suggest simplifying the process by thinking of the process in terms of content and how your patients will access that content. Your patients will need to contact your office, so how do you want to display contact information, and what contact information do you want to include?

Your patients will also want to know about the products and services you offer. How will you display these items? You could give each product and service its own page, or list all of your products on one page and all of your services on another. You could even “tag” each product with a link to the manufacturer’s official website.

Some patients might even want to know about the history of your practice: how long it has been established, how it came to be established in the first place, and who works there. And speaking of “who works there,” including information about the optometrists and staff who work in your office—perhaps their own personalized pages, even—is definitely a plus.

Finally, you should consider linking to other relevant optometry websites, such as your state’s optometric association, and other vision-related sites.

While nothing will ever replace face-to-face customer service, well-designed optometry websites go a long way toward building, maintaining, and growing the practices they advertise. Be sure to keep your practice’s website updated to keep up with our ever-growing, ever-changing marketplace.