If you have a well designed dental website then it acts as your largest source of new patients. A good website can certainly attract new patients to your dental office while a badly designed one can have the opposite effect.
If you plan to launch a new dental website for your dental office then selecting a web designer becomes a strategic decision. So, before we delve into that first let’s understand the key roles in the design process.
The different roles involved in designing the best dental website for you
Here we have discussed the who’s who in the design process so that you get a better picture of the website design process
- The website designer is like the project manager of your dental website. They will ascertain the page layout, text location, graphics, colors, navigation, and cross linking of pages in the website. They might also do the actual programming and the artwork.
- Then comes the website programmer, who takes the design and writes the code for it. They are also responsible for ensuring that the website runs seamlessly providing a great user experience for visitors.
- The graphic designer is the artist of the design process and they help create the brand’s image for the website. They select or create logos, graphics, illustrations, and other visual properties.
- The digital marketing team determines how the site fits into the overall strategy of digital marketing. They help you get more traffic to your website increasing the outreach of your dental practice.
Sometimes one professional might play more than one role or even all the four roles described above. The text content for your website is provided by a content writer and not the website designer.
In the next section, we come to the meat of the topic – How to select the best dental website designers?
Selecting the best dental website designers
Keep the following tips in mind when hiring the your dental website designers:
- Designing a website that reflects your dental practice requires an understanding website designer who is interested and invested in your goals, your dental practice, and your audience.
- You can look through the portfolio of the designers’ previous work. This gives you a better picture of their skills. Look for unique website designs that immediately put the spotlight on your dental office.
- Ensure that the website designer knows about SEO so that they optimize the website design making it for Google and other search engines to crawl your dental website quickly and efficiently. Don’t focus only on the aesthetic aspect of the website design and look at its functionality as well so that it fits neatly with your broader goals.
- If you want to maintain the website yourself then you must ask the designer to make the maintenance of your dental website easy. Your chosen designer can use platforms like WordPress, that allow easy editing of text and graphics.
- Make sure when you sign up with a team of website designers and programmers the contract explicitly states that you are the owner of the entire dental website including the copyright as well. Even the domain name should be registered under you.
- Ask about the fee and other costs involved in the design and development of your website. Go for designers that provide you with reliable estimates and are transparent with their prices. Ask a lot of questions to the designer. For Eg: How will you be invoiced? Monthly or when a significant milestone is reached?
- You are responsible for your budget and not the website designer. So you need to be alert and watch out if the designer keeps suggesting add ons that will increase your costs.
- It is better to verify the web designer you have selected by talking to their previous clients. This will also give you insights on how smooth the process is going to be. You have to enquire about the web designers’ management skills, communication skills, and punctuality.
- Clarify your deadlines and ask if they can be met. Web designers are in high demand and are booked over several weeks or months. Opt for web designers who are comfortable working according to your schedule and deadlines as they are the ones who will give the project the attention it deserves.
- Create a checklist while sifting through the portfolios of different website designers and then pick the website designer who meets all your requirements. Select a website designer who is competent, listens to you attentively, and creates a website according to your specifications, within the given time frame and budget. Your dental website should present your dental practice quite effectively.
To Recap
A dental website is more than just a marketing tool. If designed well then it can showcase your practice to the world and shed a spotlight on your dental office. You can create an image most suitable to you and your team of dentists.
But getting the right web designer who understands your requirements is not always easy. At Helenzys Dent you will have a smooth experience talking to our team of web designers who will be upfront with their costs and their working styles.
So, if you want the dental website of your dreams then contact us at the earliest and let our web designers do their best for you.