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To your patients, your designs are a direct reflection of your practice. For example, outdated designs can show potential patients that your technology, education, and techniques may also out-of-date. And cookie-cutter designs can indicate a lack of innovation. Always keep the designs for your medical practice fresh and distinctive.
Why design matters to your patients
You have just seconds to make an impression on your patients when they see your website, advertisement, or any other design that affects the buying decision. The right design grabs and retains the attention of viewers and drives them down the sales funnel. More importantly, designs can be a direct reflection of your practice. Potential patients place heavy importance on visual presentation, especially in the field of aesthetic medicine. Remember, your patients come to you to make them look and feel better, so your designs should reflect your dedication to excellence, attention to detail, and ability to innovate and stay at the top of your field.
Why design should matter to you
Design is at the heart of your branding, it’s your chance to convey your practice’s identity to those potential patients that haven’t (yet) had a chance to work with you. It shows them who you are, what you do, and your quality. Design is the ultimate first impression – and as they say, first impressions are everything. On top of making a great first impression, it’s an opportunity to stand out against the competitors in your field. If a potential patient is shopping around for a treatment or procedure and happens upon two sites; one with terrible design and user experience and the other with incredible design and user experience, they’re more than likely to choose the latter. Be the latter, be the one with incredible designs.
What makes a good design
As we mentioned earlier, design is largely subjective. But a good design should keep a few elements in mind. First and foremost, a design should always set out to accomplish a goal. Make sure you clearly define that goal from the beginning to use as a baseline for the entire process. That goal can be to educate, to announce a special or an event, or to drive conversion. Once you set your goal, make sure that your designs are made with your audience in mind and connect to the proper demographic in the proper way. Make sure your designs are clean and free of clutter so they get the point across. And finally, try to make your designs memorable. This can be the most difficult one to accomplish, but also the most important. In today’s fast-paced world, a memorable design can mean the difference between losing a patient or gaining one.
How to keep up with design trends
Now, this is a tricky one for two reasons: one – design is largely subjective, and two – design trends change at such a rapid pace in today’s digital world. For someone who’s a designer by trade, this means taking courses to brush up on technique, practicing to improve skill, reading up on latest trends, checking design review websites to see who’s winning awards, and scouring the web to get an understanding of the design landscape. However, this is not practical for a medical practice, which is why most doctors hire an agency with a team of designers to help them create high quality, eye-catching designs.
How good design leads to more patients
Design is so much more than just colors, fonts and visual content to support it. Not many realize that all of these elements are part of a strategic game, designed to masterfully pilot potential patients down the buying funnel. A well-designed website should guide patients to the pages that you want them to visit next in their journey. This could mean taking them from the homepage, to the B&A gallery, to the procedure page, and finally to the contact page. A good newsletter design will guide it’s viewers to the CTA (call to action) button. And a good advertisement should incite a viewer to want to know more or take action on the ad. Designs are more than just about looking pretty, designs are about gaining more patients.