If you are a dentist looking for new patients, you will not want to rely on traditional print based forms of marketing to attract them any longer. In addition, you will likely find that people will not call you because they found you in the telephone book, nor will they drop by your office after driving by and seeing your office.
You might wonder, then, how you will ever find new patients. The answer is quite simple, actually, and it revolves around the careful development and design of your own dental website. This site must look great on not only desktop computers, but on mobile devices as well.
The answer to ‘why’ this is true is found in the sections below. Take a look and decide for yourself just how important being mobile friendly is for your dental website.
Mobile Devices Have Smaller Screens
It might seem like a logical thing to say, but it is important to take notice of the reality that mobile devices have smaller screens. You might be wondering why in the world this is important. It is because a dental site that looks great on a 27-inch desktop computer screen will look clunky and oversized on a smartphone unless you make it mobile friendly. You must make your dental website into an adaptive one that senses the type of device that is accessing it and formats the content accordingly.
If your site is mobile friendly, people will see images load more quickly and the screen will come alive in front of them almost the moment that they arrive at the home page. You will find that people will be more likely to stick around for a while if your site is mobile friendly.
This is because the relevant content will be right there in front of them, and they will not have to engage in constant scrolling just to find what they want. You will also want to take the smaller screen into consideration as you create contact forms and ask visitors to make an appointment, among other activities that your dental site might engage people in.
Mobile Devices Have New and Innovative Features
As technology continues to evolve, there are new and innovative features being added every year. A mobile friendly dental website will be able to take advantage of these features that are not always available even on a desktop computer. The benefits of this are enormous.
You can have features on your mobile site that enable visitors to call you right from their phone, engage in chats via instant messaging or SMS, or a host of other features that can ultimately help drive business to your site.
The features available on smartphones and tablets also allow you to develop your own mobile app. This is yet another way to openly promote your dental office in such a way that meets the changing needs of society today.
An app can provide educational videos, information about your services, and appointment scheduling capabilities just to name a few of the features you can integrate into its design. You can also use your app as a Segway to your mobile website that have even more comprehensive features awaiting prospective and current patients.
Take Advantage of Locator Applications
One of the other advantages of your dental website becoming mobile friendly is that it will able to make use of locator software specifically designed for smartphones and tablets. This enables you to use your mobile website as a way to know where people are visiting you from and then engage in other types of digital marketing endeavors, such as social media or pay per click advertising.
This has great potential in terms of being to gauge the population and have your site appear higher in local searches that are being conducted for dentists in your area. This is all made possible by having a dental website that is mobile friendly and makes us of the latest in location based GPS technology. You do not want to discount the importance of this feature, because it is how people are accessing the Internet today and looking for dentists in their area. You want to be there when they conduct that search.
Consult an Expert
Similar to any other fields, there are individuals and companies that have mastered designing elegant dental websites that are mobile friendly and you can consult them. Solution21, one of the major dental website design companies, has dedicated a whole separate section to responsive website design for dentists which intends to explain mobile friendliness benefits for dental practices. Responsive dental website design is on the rise and there are experts out there you can go to.
Being mobile friendly means that your dental website will appeal to a broader segment of your local population. It means that you capture prospective patients where they are in the moment, and for most that is on a smartphone or tablet.
The goal is to provide prospective patients with ready access to your website in a format that is visually appealing and easy for them to follow and use. If you can do this, then you will most likely notice an increase in the interest level in your dental office. Patients will follow soon thereafter.
