Countless healthcare providers have a tendency to design relatively poor websites. Cluttered-looking designs and unconventional out-of-proportion page layouts are something of a disease among those who are in the business of treating diseases.You’ll also often find sites that don’t use typography correctly, which is especially problematic when dealing with those who may be grappling with certain issues.
Fortunately, it’s easy to create beautiful sites related to the medical and healthcare industries without calling in a bunch of design specialists. You may not even have to write any code yourself.
Gearing a Site to a Your Office’s Specific Function
Assuming you operate out of an ambulatory or a private practice, you’ll want to make sure that your site is geared toward the kind of people who would require the services it offers. Dental website design, for instance, would normally call for high-resolution photographs and potentially professional video production.
Some dentists might consider including a virtual tour of their offices, which is especially helpful if their clientele isn’t the sort to normally seek out dental care. On the other hand, this might be less useful to chiropractors and gastroenterologists.
In those cases, designers might want to instead focus on providing more information about the types of disorders that their office can treat. If you find yourself in a situation where you have to post a great deal of text, then you’ll probably want to follow a very conventional layout that’s easy to read.
Those who operate independent ambulatories or in-office surgeries will certainly want to post a photo of the facilities if nothing else.
Once you have the layout finished, it’s time to start thinking about
Think About User & Mobile Friendliness
Always remember that people who need access to healthcare services are more than likely in some form of distress. Few people have a great deal of patience when it comes to online navigation problems. People in this kind of situation might have even less ability to deal with these issues.
As a result, your potential users are going to need user-friendly sites that provide the kind of information they need right away. There’s no reason you need to skimp on design features, however. In fact, a utilitarian site can look rather attractive.
You might want to start by designing a site map or some other kind of list that provides links to ever resource your office hosts.
Designing a Simple Yet Attractive Site Map
Include a link all the way at the bottom of your page that’s next to your site’s privacy policy and other links mandated by the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPPA) as well as other relevant legislation. This hyperlink should point to a group of other links all located on a single page.
As well as looking good, this provides a way for users with special needs to access your healthcare services. Those who can’t use certain input devices could still rely on the tab and enter keys to locate resources in this manner. They could even use this technique to book an appointment, which is useful for those in the dental, ophthalmological and psychiatric sectors.
For that matter, it’s good for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes, since crawlers will normally follow every link. If you find yourself in a crowded segment of the healthcare industry, then a site map could help redirect traffic.
Leave out unnecessary tacky details. For instance, an eye doctor’s site isn’t helped by hosting a dated image of an eye chart.
While you’re considering the issue of accessibility, you might also want to think about the colors that you’re using on your site as well.
Color Schemes that Meet All Patients’ Needs
Some users may have difficulty distinguishing colors from one another. Don’t use any color scheme that’s unusual for this reason, and make sure that you don’t use color exclusively to share any particular piece of information.
On top of this, it’s a good idea to only ever use contrast-friendly web-safe fonts. This will ensure that your site looks good no matter what kind of device users access it on. Installing a specially designed medical theme might be a good idea depending on whether or not you use a standard WordPress kit.
Regardless of what kind of design you end up with, however, always keep in mind that your patients want quick answers to questions they may be very concerned about. Keeping this in mind will help your team put together great looking sites that also work well.