Merckling Family Chiropractic had a problem so many bustling doctor offices have. They were so busy taking care of their patients that they had let their aging website site site idle. By today’s standards, the site was poorly laid out and looked dated, had cluttered and confusing navigation, and was all but unusable on a smartphone. But you may ask yourself, “if they’re so busy, who cares if their website gets old?” The answer to that question is simple – all of their current and future patients!
Your Website is a Tool for Your Customers
Every small business should have a website. Obviously. But what most small businesses don’t realize is that their website is an important mode of communication between the company and its customers. Even if your website only has a home page, a page listing your services, and a contact page with your address and phone number, this is all critical information that your customers and potential customers may need in order to do business with you. Remember, no one is going to look you up in the yellow pages. And the likelihood of even your most loyal customer having all your information in the address book of their phone is pretty slim. The world has grown accustom to just looking up whatever we need to know on the Internet. Even the companies we do business with every day. So, if someone can’t quickly find what they need on your site you risk losing them as a customer.
In the case of a chiropractor’s office, which often needs to perform scary sounding and often misunderstood procedures on its patients, the need to reassure and educate becomes paramount. On top of that, making available the necessary forms that will speed up intake at appointment time means the office can run that much smoother. To accomplish this we spent a lot of time with Dr. Joseph Merckling at his Bellport, Long Island office, to better understand his practice and the services he provides. The result was a streamlined navigation that quickly guides patients to whatever they need to know.
Want to learn more about the different chiropractic treatments the office can provide? Or maybe you just need to understand how chiropractic care can help with your specific issue. In a single drop-down menu, answers to most of these questions can be found.
Compare that to the old site, where the top navigation was the equivalent of a run-on sentence and you can clearly see the improvement.
Make it Easy for Them
The mantra of Electric Bricks is “pain-free web design”. The idea is that we make the process as simple as we can for our clients. Your website needs to do the same for your customers. For Merckling Family Chiropractic that also meant making it ridiculously easy for new patients to request an appointment. Not only is there a simplified appointment form right on the home page, but there is also a persistent call-to-action in the header reminding site visitors they should make that appointment now.
The Final Product
All of these elements come together to make this website a really useful tool for Dr. Merckling’s patients. In addition to this, the marketing message for the site was carefully crafted to take it a step further and help to convince new patients that Merckling Family Chiropractic is the office they should trust. But we’ll discuss that aspect in a future article since the topic really deserves special attention.