ClinicSense Community Idea: Reflecting On Business Practices

An idea from Janet in Massachusetts.

"Something I'm doing that hasn't been mentioned yet is taking time to go back and make some improvements to my online accounts. For example, I've searched my business name and found some profiles that were either out-of-date or just not complete. These are profiles like Google Maps, Yelp, etc. So I spent some time getting them all right. I also noticed there were some reviews there that I haven't replied to. So I wrote replies :)

Next, I spent some time on my website. It's been a while since I updated it. I did some research on best practices for websites like mine. Here are a few tips I found:

• The main goal of the website is to have a clear "call to action". Pretty much, what do I want the website visitor to do on my site. For me, this was clear: book an appointment. So the first thing I did was make sure my Book Appointment button was highly visible on all of my web pages. I also changed some of my copy to be more direct. For example, the end of each service description says some variation of 'Book an appointment today'.
• Next, I removed about 50% of everything I wrote on my website. I've learned that people don't really read, they skim. So each of my service descriptions is now only 2-3 sentences and I only talk about the most important things. I also cut down on my "About me" section to highlight the things the customer is most interested in: how long I have been in practice, what differentiates me (so I highlight my continuing education), and then one paragraph that tries to make a personal connection.
• You should use the same phrases that people are likely to search for when using Google. This will help your website show up in the Google search results. For me, this meant taking out some more technical words and replacing it with layman's terms.

After making those changes, I knew I needed to update the look, so I just Googled "modern website designs" and started to look over websites that I liked the look of. In the end, I was able to find a new template using my website builder and it wasn't too much work.

Finally, I changed up my Facebook and Instagram profile photos. It had been a couple years, so I was due for a new photo of myself :)"