Building Your Mobile-Ready Website to Connect with More Patients

Mobile devices have made life a lot easier, wouldn’t you agree? Thanks to advancements in the sophistication of smartphone technology, we have instant access to all types of information whenever and wherever we need it.

The mobile phenomenon isn’t going anywhere any time soon. Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, says that the mobile Web is growing eight times faster than the first wave of online Internet adoption. Further, according to GoMo, Google’s mobile initiative, smartphones will outtake personal computers as the number one Web access device by 2013.

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That said healthcare providers must embrace the mobile Web in order to connect with a growing number of patients who prefer their iPhones to their desktop computers. There are many benefits to having a mobile-enhanced website including:

  • Immediacy

Visitors are typically looking for quick, actionable information when they visit a website via their smartphone. They want a phone number, hours of operation, directions to your office or to request an appointment. With a mobile website, patients can access this information from any location and at at any time, giving them the ability to make on-demand decisions and making your practice accessible wherever your patients go.

  • Enhanced User Experience

Websites designed for a desktop computer don’t perform well on mobile devices. On the small screen of a smartphone, a non-mobile website’s pages are difficult to navigate, and text and navigation buttons are often too small to be read without pinching and zooming. Mobile sites on the other hand are organized, easy to view and “thumb friendly,” meaning users can find the information they are looking for in just a few clicks. Click-to-call and instant mapping functions, among other mobile-specific features, eliminate any extra steps required to contact or visit your practice.

  • Increased Visibility
    Healthcare professionals with a mobile-friendly website also enjoy a distinct search ranking advantage over other providers that do not have a mobile site. Google, Yahoo!, Bing and other major search engines rank mobile-optimized websites higher than their competition, putting you in front of mobile users at the very moment they are searching for your services.

As more people turn to their mobile devices, an increasing amount of your website traffic will also come from smartphones and tablets. But what will your patients see when they visit your site from their phone? If your current site hasn’t been optimized for mobile, then there’s a good chance visitors will move onto a competitor’s mobile-ready site to find the information they’re seeking. Ask your website developer to recreate your Webpages for mobile browsing, or find a provider who is proficient in mobile website development.

About the Author

Kaitlyn Ytterberg is a writer for Officite, a leading provider of medical websites and online marketing. Officite specializes in Internet marketing and practice website design for all healthcare specialties, including dentists, podiatrists and cardiologists. Services span from SEO and social media to reputation management, blogging and mobile websites.

 

3 Comments

  1. business phone on October 12, 2012 at 1:28 am

    Smartphone is the best way for communication and also for business. Good thing our generation has this kind of technologies.



  2. nursefriendly on October 13, 2012 at 1:49 pm

    Good to know for us webmasters who “have been around” for a while 🙂 Some definite usability testing on mobile platforms is in order.
    Andrew Lopez, RN
    http://nursefriendly.com



  3. innovativenurse on October 13, 2012 at 8:22 pm

    @nursefriendly Many frameworks now have built in mobile functionality, which is a huge time and money saver when you don’t have to build out a mobile site or have your current site converted.



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