Murad Bushnaq on May 9, 2022
No two medical offices are the same. For example, a dentist's office might be decorated with models of the human mouth, posters explaining how to properly floss, and pictures of patients showing off their pearly whites. A sports medicine clinic, on the other hand, might display pictures of famous athletes, hang posters with inspiring sayings, and keep sports-related magazines in its waiting area. Clearly, medical offices are designed with their audience in mind.
Just as your medical office is a physical hub for your practice, your office, clinic, or hospital's website serves as the center of your online presence. And just like your office, you need to think about its design in order for it to be the best possible resource for your patients. When you have a solid design, your website can be a place where you establish your brand as a medical practice and empower patients to get important information and complete tasks. The ideal medical website design will set up new patients to learn about your services and initiate care, and help current patients pay bills, get updates on news or events, and have their questions answered — and more.
But designing your medical website may sound like a task easier said than done. After all, as a professional in the healthcare sector, it's unlikely that you're moonlighting as a webmaster or have untapped expertise in coding.
We'll let you in on a little web design secret: By doing a little homework to understand medical website design and leveraging the right tools, you can create or revamp your practice's website without having to call in a developer.
This guide is a great starting point, whether you're a complete web design beginner or looking to brush up on basics you've used before. In it, we'll cover the following:
As you get started, remember that just as no two medical practices are alike, no two medical websites are alike. With the tips provided in this guide, you'll be ready to identify and meet your specific audience's needs and foster deeper connections with the people you serve. Ready to go? Let's dive in!
In this section, we'll answer some common questions about medical website design. This information will provide a solid foundation that you can work off of to design a website that will help your practice shine.
You can think of your medical website as a virtual representation of everything your practice stands for. From your "Services" page to your blog roll, your medical website should showcase what you do as a medical professional and how you serve the patients that come to your practice for care.
For your patients, your medical website will serve as an easy-to-access resource where they can go for answers to their questions, tools to schedule appointments and order prescriptions, and important news and updates. When designing your medical website, consider how you want to present your practice and how you want that presentation to be received by your audience.
A well-designed website starts with the website builder or content management system (CMS) you decide to host it on. With the right CMS, you can create an aesthetically-pleasing website that hosts all of the resources and tools you want to provide to your patients. There are a lot of CMS options out there, but some are bettered geared for medical website development than others. More on this below!
The answer to this question will look different for every medical practice. However, there are three general characteristics a medical website needs to be truly useful to its audience:
Now that you've learned the basics about medical website design, you're ready to jump into more specific design tips that can make your website an asset to your practice.
In this section, we'll take you through 11 tips that will cover the most important aspects of medical website design. As you read, consider your specific audience and what your patients will need from your website. Our tips can be applied to any medical practice's website, but it's up to you to determine your specific audience's needs.
As mentioned above, a CMS is a tool you use to bring your website to life. Through your CMS you can set up your website, add web pages, start a blog, connect your site to your social media profiles, employ search engine optimization (SEO) best practices, and more.
Your CMS is the foundational tool that makes medical web design possible, which means it's worth it to take your time and choose your software wisely.
You may be tempted to go with a generic CMS that you know is popular — something like WordPress, Squarespace, Wix or Drupal. While these website builders certainly have their merits, they come with major drawbacks, not the least of which is that they aren't built with medical professionals' needs in mind.
For example, say you want to add a private patient portal to your website, a place where patients can request prescription refills and send private messages to their care provider. You might be able to do something like this with a CMS like WordPress, but it will likely require more extensive technical know-how and the addition of many plugins and extensions.
Instead, we recommend you look for a CMS designed with the healthcare sector in mind, such as Morweb.
With an industry-approved website builder like Morweb, you can easily do the following:
The best part about Morweb is that your design experience can be intuitive. You won't need to scour the internet trying to decipher backend coding or stress about what your final product is going to look like. You can get started right away and easily make changes and adjustments that will improve the website visitor experience.
Morweb is our top pick for a CMS ready to meet your medical design needs. To get a feel for the other options on the market, we suggest you check out Morweb's roundup of the best medical website builders.
Part of effective medical website design is anticipating how your audience will be accessing your site. And all signs point to mobile devices as a big factor in prepping your website for your audience. According to Statista, "In 2021, the number of unique mobile internet users stood at 4.32 billion, indicating that over 90 percent of the global internet population use a mobile device to go online." These numbers speak for themselves: Medical professionals can't afford to overlook their audience members that will be visiting their websites using phones or tablets. This is why you must prioritize mobile responsiveness when designing your site.
What does it mean when a website is mobile-responsive or mobile-friendly? In short, a medical website that is mobile-friendly will adjust to fit the screen of whatever device a visitor is viewing it on — whether that's a computer, tablet, or smartphone. This allows users to interact with content on their favorite devices without having to inconveniently pinch or scroll. Just imagine how frustrating it would be for someone who's sick and struggling to reach your team without mobile responsiveness.
By making your website mobile-friendly, not only will you create a positive user experience for mobile visitors, but you may even boost your visibility on popular search engines which will ultimately help you to get in front of more prospects. In 2015, Google rolled out an update indicating that mobile-friendliness can affect how your website ranks on the Google search engine. In other words, web pages that are interactive and easily readable on mobile devices tend to rank higher in a list of search results than those that aren't.
To connect with patients who access your website via mobile devices, implement these tips for a mobile-friendly medical website design:
Developing multiple versions of your website can be a pain. Simplify this process with a CMS like Morweb that offers automatic mobile responsiveness. This way, your content will automatically adjust without you needing to make custom changes, saving you time that can be better spent focusing on your practice and boosting patient satisfaction.
Iroquois Memorial Hospital makes its medical website design feel like the same business across all devices. Thanks to the mobile-responsive design, the content on their site automatically resizes based on the user’s screen size and provides all key information that users need so that it’s both readable and interactive. This way, anyone can learn about the hospital's services, providers, and locations no matter what device they're using.
If you’re still in the early stages of development of your medical web design, you might be wondering, "Why do I need an interactive healthcare website?" The answer is simple: even if you don't have one, your competition does.
In a world where your patients can schedule appointments from the comfort of their couches, it's crucial that you prioritize interactivity to match up to your competition. Otherwise, you may lose business to a competing hospital or healthcare specialist with a more engaging design. In fact, 75% of consumers admit to judging a business's credibility by its website design.
Keep in mind that all medical websites are designed with certain goals in mind, whether that goal is increasing inquiries or encouraging patients to schedule appointments. By making your healthcare web design interactive, you'll increase patient engagement and ultimately reach your conversion goals.
Let's walk through three key ways you can funnel visitors toward completing your desired goals:
When you use these interactive features in your medical website design, you're bound to improve the user experience, which will directly impact a variety of metrics, such as time spent on the page, bounce rate, and click-through rate.
Note that resources you offer that record sensitive patient information will need to be compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). Keeping personal information secure will help you build a rapport with your patients and will encourage them to use your interactive resources again and again!
Friends of Family Health Center offers an extremely interactive healthcare website design. From the first glance at their homepage, you know about the type of care they offer and can see interactive videos that showcase their top-tier facility. Using helpful buttons, they encourage users to learn more about the services they specialize in, as well as locate providers within the network near them. Plus, they offer a patient portal that empowers patients to take a more active role in managing their care.
Providing content that's interesting and valuable to your patient base can take your medical web design to the next level. While this will encourage existing patients to regularly visit your website, it will also inspire first-time visitors to click through to other content on your website. If they find their medical needs match your expertise, they’re much more likely to schedule an appointment or reach out to learn more.
According to Demand Metric, content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about three times as many leads. In other words, creating and sharing valuable content is a cost-effective opportunity for any practitioner looking to get ahead of the competition.
As you map out your medical website design, consider sharing valuable content such as the following:
As you spend time developing valuable content for your visitors, you'll continue to increase brand awareness, generate more leads, and grow customer retention. Blogging, Q&As, and reviews will serve as a solid foundation for your content marketing strategy, so starting there is your best option.
Community Health Connections has worked for 20 years to serve the low-income, underinsured, uninsured, publicly-housed, and homeless populations of North Central Massachusetts. Through their healthcare web design, they provide insightful descriptions of their services and helpful information about their programs and resources.
Further, they use their blog to provide thought leadership on various health-related topics. Through this powerful content, they connect with prospective patients who may otherwise turn to another healthcare professional for treatment.
A major part of an intuitive medical web design is its navigation structure. If your visitors can't find their way around your website, they may grow frustrated and ultimately take their business elsewhere. As we mentioned earlier, someone who’s sick and looking for medical assistance doesn't have time to struggle with an unintuitive website.
According to a recent study, 94% of consumers indicate that easy navigation is the most important website feature, meaning navigation strongly influences the effectiveness and perception of your medical web design. Maneuvering through content shouldn't be challenging, and if it is, you'll likely steer some individuals away.
When creating your website, keep these key navigation tools in mind to create the best possible healthcare web design:
Prioritizing a navigable medical web design increases the likelihood of prospective patients booking appointments. In no time, you'll push more visitors down the conversion funnel.
THEN Center researches and demonstrates the direct connection between trauma, chronic disease, and health disparity. Their website serves as an educational resource for the public to learn about their findings.
In their medical web design, they prioritize smooth navigation by first featuring a well-structured static navigation bar. Across their website, you'll see they've strategically placed CTAs that guide users to subscribe to their newsletter.
Effective imagery can take your medical website design from mundane to engaging. Content with appealing imagery consistently outperforms text-heavy pages in terms of views and shares. In fact, posts that include images produce 650% higher engagement rates than text-only posts. What this means is that any website with visual content will perform better than one without it.
In terms of medical website development, high-quality photos allow you to showcase the quality of products and services you provide, so prospective patients can determine if your offerings align with their needs. Remember to also share pictures of your doctors, so new patients know who they're booking an appointment with. Further, videos and photo slideshows add life to your website and humanize your healthcare web design that's likely to stick with prospects.
Let's walk through three key tips for making your visual content stand out to patients and other visitors:
Remember, all of the traffic you receive won't help your practice if you fail to deliver visually-engaging content that resonates with site visitors. As part of your medical website design, ensure your images are up-to-par, serve your overall goals, and convert visitors into patients.
Rainbow Hospice Care features captivating imagery at the forefront of its design strategy. Throughout this healthcare website, original photos paired with impactful text resonate with visitors and connect with the right audience. Through these visual strategies, this organization is able to effectively convey their authenticity as well as the level of care they provide to those facing terminal illnesses.
When selecting a healthcare provider, patients have numerous options, so don't leave any room for interpretation in terms of your practice. Your medical web design must clearly convey your services and define what differentiates your practice from competitors.
Start by making it immediately apparent the kind of healthcare provider you are, the services you provide, and the patients you treat. Your medical website visitors are often busy, which means they may not have time to conduct an in-depth search or may give up quickly if the information they need isn’t immediately available.
Then, you'll need to take it a step further. Think of it as a way to tell your story and convey what you stand for. Let's walk through a few key elements for accomplishing clear brand messaging in your medical web design:
Being straightforward about your practice will help you clearly define your brand and position you as a respectable, trustworthy option for patients. When incorporated effectively into your healthcare web design, these branded elements will tie together to accurately communicate what your practice stands for and who you serve.
THEN Center has a distinct visual brand that guides the entire design of this medical website. At every turn on this website, the look is inspired by THEN Center's distinctive logo, built off of their acronym. The dark blues and light blues in the design match the logo perfectly and guide the coloring for the text and icons on every page.
THEN Center also relies on carefully-curated stock photos to illustrate their work and target audience on every page, establishing connections with website visitors right off the bat.
In the early days of the internet, everyone had slow websites. However, today is a different story. Users expect your content to load quickly, and if it doesn't, they might jump to a competitor's site instead.
To quicken your load time, let's explore a few options that can be easily incorporated into your medical website design:
When mapping out your medical website design, measure with Google's free page speed insight tool. Diagnose any potential loading issues and adjust your web pages to minimize load time. By taking these extra steps to improve load speed, you'll convey to patients that you care about their experience and will set high expectations for interactions with your practice from the start.
West Coast Endodontics and Sedation Centre works to treat all of their patients with individualized care and to keep patients fully involved in their dental health. When developing their site, they opted to feature a minimalist healthcare website design without sacrificing quality. They offer a few captivating photos that tell their story and limit the text to only the essentials while still informing their audience and persuading them to get more involved. Further, they've limited the number of pages on their website to display everything a prospective patient would like to know without providing extra, unnecessary information that clutters up the pages.
An accessible medical website design is paramount to getting in front of more potential patients, especially if you serve individuals with disabilities. While many of these guidelines require the help of a professional medical web developer, there are a few steps your healthcare organization can take toward better accessibility on its own.
Start with CMS that offers a web accessibility widget, like Morweb. Tools like this allow your medical website's visitors to adjust the text size, change the font type to non-serif, highlight links, and change the web pages to greyscale. These options enable people with disabilities to customize their user experience and will also help you meet several important Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) guidelines.
Let's dive into a few of the key requirements set forth by accessibility guidelines:
Not only will implementing these tips allow individuals with hearing and visual impairments to interact with your content, but it will also enhance your medical website's overall design. Taking these steps as you go will prevent you from having to conduct a complete accessibility overhaul in the future, so do everything you can now to optimize your medical website for accessibility.
The AlivioCare medical website design exemplifies the characteristics of good accessibility. When taking a look at this healthcare website, you'll notice they make use of high-contrast colors and large text to make content easy to view. They also add descriptive alt-text to help those with screen reader technology understand what the images are and what purpose they serve.
They take it one step further and implement Morweb's web accessibility widget, allowing those with impairments to take control of their own user experience and adjust the content to suit their needs.
The ultimate action you want your website's visitors to take is to initiate care in some way, whether they're returning patients or prospective patients. And the only way they can do so is if you provide them with clear contact information.
Burying your contact information on your website, or worse, leaving it off altogether, can be frustrating for individuals who are sick or in pain and want to make an appointment quickly. Instead, you'll want to prominently display your contact information and provide clear instructions for how to schedule an appointment.
Here are some specific pieces of contact information you'll want to include:
Another important aspect of providing clear contact information on your medical website is regularly updating it. If your phone number, email, or physical location changes, you could be leaving your patients to be confused as to where to go for their appointments or how to schedule appointments. Maintain accurate information at all times to continue building rapport with your website visitors.
The Ohio County Healthcare website excels in anticipating its visitors' needs. Not only does this organization display its phone number clearly at the top of its static menu, but it also includes a dedicated "Contact" page. On this page, Ohio County Healthcare displays its address, an interactive map, and instructions for reaching its main switchboard and patient rooms. It also includes a contact form that visitors can fill out and submit in order to get in touch with this practice.
In the healthcare world, there is a great need for security and privacy due to the sensitive nature of medical records and information. This means that security should be a top priority for any medical practice that provides tools where patients or practitioners enter sensitive medical, financial, or contact information.
This is where password-protected patient resources come in. With the right CMS, you can leverage secure tools while allowing your patients greater flexibility in how they access care. For example, a patient might be able to request a prescription refill or to send a private message to their doctor without having to call your office or schedule an appointment.
To offer resources like these, you'll need to use your CMS to set up a secure intranet network. This will allow you to grant certain users access to secure tools once they've made a username and password, and to keep bots and malicious hackers out of the picture.
To maintain the security of your password-protected patient resources, make sure to do the following:
Tools like a patient portal or online bill-paying platform can be great assets for your practice, but you'll need to do the work beforehand to ensure they're adding to the patient experience, not causing more stress to those you serve.
SafeNetRx is a nonprofit that provides vulnerable populations with donated medicines. Due to the nature of their work, a patient portal is a crucial tool for their website. Their patient portal, called the Repository, allows individuals with a username and password to log on to order medications they need. Their secure password-protected page is a great example of the types of secure resources you can offer by using the right CMS.
It doesn't matter whether you're a pediatric dentist or an emergency room receptionist — with the right tools and these tips backing you up, you have everything you need to create a healthcare website design as unique as every individual who walks through your door seeking care.
As you embark on your healthcare website development journey, remember to prioritize creating content and tools that are accessible, easy-to-use, and useful.
Now that you know the basics, you're likely eager to keep learning. Check out this additional reading:
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