Does Your Practice’s Website Need an Upgrade? Top Tips for Creating a Mobile-Friendly Provider Website

Privia Medical Group recently launched our new website, PriviaMedicalGroup.com, with a streamlined look and feel to make it easily navigable for our 4 million patients.

Patients want convenience and ease of use when they seek to find a doctor, book an appointment, have their questions answered, and manage their care, so Privia’s digital team kept these factors top of mind during our redesign, and we’d like to share some website tips with you.
A well-designed medical group site with lots of bells and whistles can cost tens of thousands of dollars. But, there are some fairly inexpensive tweaks you can make on your current site to ensure that your patients know where to go and what to do when they visit.  It’s likely that you won’t be designing or developing your own provider website, but you can use the following tips as a checklist for whoever you commission to do the work:
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO) Search engines are constantly changing the way websites are ranked. Not only do algorithms constantly update, but the devices that we use to search online are changing the ways results are ranked. Nowadays, the most important thing for SEO is website content itself: making sure it is consistent, unique, fresh, and provides value to your visitors. So, keep your “About Us” page updated, make sure you include a providers bio page that goes beyond just listing education and specialities, and include a page on your site for each of the services you offer. If you blog, be sure to write posts related to trending keywords in the realm of patient care. Are you a member of any professional organizations, or are you participating in any events that have websites? If you’re given the opportunity, be sure to place a link to your practice’s site from those sites. Search engines considers these backlinks “votes” that increase your website’s ranking on SERPs, or search engine results pages.
A STREAMLINED EXPERIENCE: Even if your current website design is simple, make sure it provides a consistent experience for your patients. What does that mean? That it’s easy to scan, easy to navigate, and enables patients to find what they need quickly. Break up blocks of text with images and other multimedia, use clearly labeled buttons to direct visitor traffic, and don’t use too many distracting fonts or colors.
ONLINE SCHEDULING Your website should provide easy access to online scheduling that allows patients to instantly book appointments and have real-time visibility into their providers’ schedule. Online scheduling helps busy patients find convenient appointment times with their provider and book them online, while freeing up your staff to focus on other high-value tasks.
AN INTEGRATED PATIENT PORTAL:  Is your patient portal fully integrated into your website? Does it allow patients to refill prescriptions, access lab results, pay bills, and communicate directly with you or their provider through secure online messaging? These are important to keep in mind for the convenience of your patients, especially as patient care trends toward consumerism.
>>DON’T FORGET: However you choose to design your site, HIPAA compliance is a must. Build yours with compliance in mind.
ACCESSIBLE: Your website is an extremely valuable tool to further your practice’s population health strategy. Access is a key strategy in population health, so be sure that your site is both mobile- and tablet-friendly. Your website’s patient portal, online scheduling and search engine optimization should make it easy for your patients to stay connected with your practice wherever they are. Creating multiple patient access points will help drive patient loyalty, and improve their continuity of care.
EDUCATIONAL COMPONENTS: Your website should clearly tell patients what to do when they are in need of immediate care and include a list of immediate care locations. After you’ve taken care of that, consider adding some extra educational components to your website, like a blog. Writing posts on a regular schedule will give your website fresh, timely content, a boon for its SEO.