Planning on starting a medical website for your practice? Before you spend a dime on building your site, ask yourself what your objectives are. What is Medical Marketing the purpose of your medical website development? What do you want your website to do?

Do you want it to attract new patients to your Healthcare Website Design practice or simply answer the endless routine questions about your accepted health insurance plans, office hours, contact information and address? Once you decide on these factors, you can then create a strategy to build the website that best suits your needs.

There are two types of medical websites: brochure websites and interactive websites.

Brochure website: Also referred to as brochureware, a brochure website gives visitors specific information about who you are, where your practice is located and what services you provide. Actually, it is similar to a printed informational brochure.

Interactive website: Think of this type of website as a two-way highway. It gives info to get info back in return. An interactive website helps you build a relationship with prospective patients and a better relationship with existing patients. Today, there are many ways to make a medical website interactive, depending on the features and tools you incorporate.

To make your website interactive, allow your visitors to do the following:

• Schedule an appointment online.
• Download particular reports after providing their e-mail address.
• Ask the doctor a question and receive a response at the provided e-mail address.
• Sign up for your online e-newsletter.
• Determine their payment options by working with your online financial tools.
• Complete paperwork, such as a patient’s health questionnaire or HIPPA forms that they can electronically send to the office or bring with them on their first visit to save time at their initial consultation.
• Learn more about the services you offer and the procedure that they’re interested in by viewing online learning modules.
• Watch videos of you being interviewed in the media, demonstrating a procedure or consulting a patient, as well as videos of patient testimonials.
• Pay their bills electronically online.

You can also put photos of the doctors and staff on your website, as well as a virtual tour of your office. Also, including information about the doctors’ degrees, their continuing medical education, honors and accomplishments received by the physicians, as well as any prestigious organizations to which the practice belongs, will help to boost your practice’s image online.