Optometric Websites – Time For Enhancement

There is an art to designing optometric websites—if you do it right, you’ll see an instant boost to your practice. And while a basic website is better than no website at all, going the extra mile can really expand your patient base. This is one case where attention to detail really pays off.

Here are a few tips culled from successful optometric websites that will have your own site getting all kinds of buzz:

Keep it User-Friendly. Given that many of your visitors might have varying degrees of vision impairment, this is a given. Providing a user-friendly environment gives your patients confidence in what you do and the services you provide.

Address the Basics. It may be hard to believe, but new websites often leave out important information like hours, directions, and services. Think about what you’d definitely want to see if you were a patient, and make sure it’s included on your website. Go a step further, even, and solicit feedback before going live—just to make sure you didn’t miss anything important.

Talk about Yourself. People want to know about you, so include some general “about” information, like the history of your practice, and short, individualized biographies of key staff. This will build trust and familiarity among your patients, a key step in actually retaining them.
Make Your Site Known. If people in your area don’t know about your site, they should. Get the word out through search engine optimization so your site will appear in local searches on Google, Yahoo, and other popular search engines. Sign up with Yahoo Local and Google Maps, too, so that patients know exactly where to find you.

Give Patients a Reason to Visit. Incentives, incentives, incentives! Including special offers, coupons, an opt-in newsletter, and other services that people will find useful will be a big plus for your website.

Go the Extra Mile. What can you put on your website that will benefit your patients the most? Interactive features like a glasses suggestion tool or real-time online scheduling rank high on this list. Including features like these will help your site stand out and will ensure return visits from your patients.
Optometric websites that focus on what patients want and need are generally successful. By following the tips above, you’ll be well on your way to establishing your presence on the Internet and using it to build your patient base.

Eye Care Practice Management in Today’s Competitive Marketplace

Growing your practice in today’s competitive marketplace is no easy task. Traditional means of getting the word out to your patients—ads in the Yellow Pages, newspapers, and on the radio—are effective, but also costly. How can you expand your practice without also paying more? Does optical practice management need to cost a lot?

Fortunately, it doesn’t. You can harness the power of the Internet to do all of the things that traditional advertising did for you, and at a fraction of the cost. Your current patient list is like a pot of gold waiting to be discovered. By revising your optical practice management to be in step with current best practices, you’ll be well on your way to outperforming the competition.

Here are some ways you can market to your current patient list:

o Write a periodic newsletter and send it to patients via e-mail.
o Build a better website. Include special offers to visitors, and offer them the opportunity to sign up for you e-newsletter.
o Ask visitors to return. It’s amazing what a simple, “Thank you, come again!” will do for your optical practice management. Courtesy counts.
o Ask for a referral. In other words, if you can tell a patient is happy with the service you’ve provided, see if they can’t recommend some of their friends, relatives, or co-workers to visit you. Make things easier by handing them a few extra business cards for good measure.

A quick note on the e-newsletter—make sure you get permission from the people to whom you intend to send it. Federal spam legislation now requires that people give you permission before you send an e-mail to them. By creating an “opt-in” for these patients, you’re following the guidelines and showing your courtesy at the same time.

Want to market to your current patient base effectively? Following the eye care practice management suggestions listed above will get you on the right path.

Eye Care Marketing and Email: The Doctor Will Text You Now

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000…513900382.html
(You may need a subscription, but here’s the link)

The article in this morning’s journal, “The Doctor Will Text You Now: Patients Visit With Their Physicians Online as More Insurers Begin Paying for Digital Diagnoses” gets off on to an embarrassing start by using a ‘red eye’ example, which you have to let slide (for now) in order to get to what I think really can be helpful.

This is what motivated me to share it with you:

“This year, 39% of doctors said they’d communicated with patients online, up from just 16% five years earlier, according to health-information firm Manhattan Research, a unit of Decision Resources Inc. So far, the most common digital doctor services are the simplest ones, like paying bills, sending lab results and scheduling appointments. But patients like Ms. Rust are also using computers to deal with issues that usually require a trip to the doctor’s office.”

And this where they miss the point:

The article goes on to focus on reimbursement as they describe the demand for online care growing leading to “more health insurers begin paying doctors for treating patients virtually, albeit at a lower fee scale than for traditional in-office appointments.”
***

Perhaps the Internist, overwhelmed with 40 patients per day, cringes at the idea of answering a flurry of patient emails ‘on the house’. Maybe you can’t blame the insurance provider for looking for ways of keeping patients out of the office.

But what about doctors who simply want to provide a valuable service, build solid loyalty, and GIVE patients a compelling reason to refer family and friends?

Many of you already make this service available in your practices. Its even part of your marketing strategy. You have a website and email contact form (so you don’t get spam). Some of you collect emails and regularly broadcast to your patients.

A lot of patients will email you from vacation. Some will have questions best answered by your staff. Occasionally, you’ll get a note from a prospective patient- usually with a good question – who almost always becomes your new patient soon.

Many of us immediately see the downside. What ‘can of worms’ am I opening with this? Does my response need to be formal? I don’t have time for this. Is this patient going to abuse this/me? Patient loyalty is complex and not predictable, and therefore you cannot rely on this alone to build trust (perhaps true). Is this even HIPPA compliant?

Of course, in reality, patients are simply overwhelmed by your willingness to acknowledge them (in any format) and most-often they WILL follow your advise — whether you reassure them, answer a question, call in an RX, or send them to the nearest ER.

And more often than not, you’ll get a very well-articulated question from a patient pointing out a problem or concern that many other patients might be thinking about. If you can then capitalize on this by delivering your response to the greater patient base, you have just leveraged serious value.

Okay. Now worry with the tiny reimbursement from the insurance masters.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000…513900382.html

Read more about how optometry marketing and email can transform the way you practice!

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.

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