Do not let down your potential patients with an unprofessional website template. Your chosen template will guide your site’s audience, from strangers to brand ambassadors.
Whether you want to outsource your website creation or build it yourself, choosing a website template or model will save you time and make your work easier. Embarking on website development without a desired model is synonymous with constructing your home without a house plan. That’s a bad idea, right? We thought so.
If you want to turn your website into an efficient patient-generating machine, you are at the right place. Here, we will go over every factor you need to consider before choosing a website for your physical therapy brand.
A great physical therapy website is like a bouquet housed in a vase. The vase is the website template, and it can only contain as many flowers as its design allows.
In professional terms, website templates are pre-designed layouts that permit editing of features such as color, logo, photo, font, site content, etc.
Personalizing or using a website template doesn’t need prior coding knowledge. Website templates make your work faster and easier. All you have to do is tweak the parameters to suit your vision for your company’s website.
Heartbreak is painful, but have you ever been forced to dump a whole website design after discovering that it does not support the essential features you need to grow your brand? The loss of time and money stings like a bee.
Below are the factors you need to consider so you won’t make costly mistakes while building your physical therapy website:
All clients are at different stages in the buying cycle. Some are yet to decide, while others are ready to pay for your PT services. Your website needs to cater to every type of client.
Returning clients are most likely looking for new updates, clinic news, and scheduling information. On the other hand, new customers are searching for more information on services, conditions, insurance, location, hours, forms, and contact.
To ensure no client is left out, create various call-to-action buttons for every phase of the buying cycle. Below are the four call-to-action buttons you must embed on your site. Each button must lead to a form that can be downloaded and submitted.
The Discovery visit CTA button is meant for potential clients who are dilly-dallying about visiting a physical therapist. They have no idea if the procedure would work for their condition.
Hence, they need help figuring out the perfect solution and reassurance that your service will make them lead healthier lives.
The speak with a PT CTA button is for potential clients that aren’t moved to book a physical appointment but would like to clear their doubts on the phone.
Some clients know what they want and believe your physical therapy clinic is the best for them.
Such clients were referred by a friend or made up their minds after going through a series of positive online reviews.
They want to know the availability of the physical therapist plus the cost per session before making payment.
This CTA button targets returning clients that were impressed by their growth after receiving professional help from your clinic.
Decide what type of website template you need
There are six different types of website templates. We do not believe a one-size-fits-all template exists for all physical therapy brands.
Let your vision, budget, and business prototype guide your choice. The below-listed template types vary in pricing, complexity, and features.
A static website is unable to display a content update automatically. It is cheaper compared to the dynamic website.
A static website is not for you if you need to upload new content, such as blogs, to your site frequently. It is best suited for businesses that don't warrant regular website maintenance.
Side Note: Google's algorithm favors sites that regularly update their old content and post new ones. For physical therapists that desire to compete for the limited space on the Google Search engine, a static website is a bad idea, more like a taboo.
A dynamic website is modeled to respond to users' input and other prerequisites. Unlike static websites, dynamic websites are complex, SEO-friendly, and pricey.
It is your best bet if you are looking for a website that presents varying data or products based on user's preferences and locations.
A one-page website, as its name implies, has a single page. Single-page websites are easier to navigate, simpler, and load faster than multi-page websites.
However, they are not SEO-friendly. The more pages you have, the higher your shots at targeting desired keywords in your niche.
A multi-page website can contain many linked pages. You can create specific pages for every medical condition you treat and the array of services you provide.
Multi-page websites enable potential customers to make informed decisions. They allow you to convert cold traffic to hot traffic without removing them from your website.
A responsive website can detect users' gadgets and rearrange the width and length to fit the detected screen size. Such a type of design maintains a consistent user experience across all platforms.
Adaptive designs do not adapt to every platform. Instead, they provide static layouts for every gadget, meaning a pre-structured website layout is fashioned specifically for various buckets of users.
Side note: both responsive and Adaptive designs satisfy all types of users, be it mobile or desktop users. However, responsive design is best suited for bigger sites built from the ground up. On the other hand, Adaptive designs are best suited for smaller sites that are being updated.
The trending website design for physical therapy clinics in 2010 might not cut it for users in 2020. You might have to go site shopping to stay in the loop regarding what designs work and what don’t.
Off the top of your head, list up to ten relevant physical therapy-related websites in your region and note them down. If you can’t think of up to five, ask Google for help by searching for “ten best physical therapy clinics in your area.” if you live in Michigan, search for the best physical therapy clinics in Michigan.
Go through the first twenty results on Google and bookmark the ones that suit your fancy. Then, when shopping for website templates on your desired website builder, choose the ones most similar to the ones you bookmarked earlier.
Coming up with ‘something new’ is a fantastic idea, but users have been conditioned to what a professional physical therapy site should look like. Going against the grain comes with its consequences.
A page layout dictates the organization of visual elements on the page. It deals with structural principles of composition that affect the message on the page.
While you can only have one website template per site, you can have multiple page layouts on one website. The best page layout for a page depends on its purpose.
We will discuss the six types of page layouts available and their respective purposes.
The Z-pattern layout directs the user's view in a Z-shaped manner across the page, enabling readers to navigate and imbibe your content easily.
This pattern directs the user's view in an F-shaped manner, making it easier to read. The F-pattern layout favors text-based content, for instance, a blog page.
This layout parts the screen into two sections. The split screen displays different types of products and services the owner offers. Since every client is unique, your job as a physical therapist is to tailor the best services for different clients and ensure they reflect on the split screen layout.
Let's say you are taking an unconventional approach toward physical therapy and want that uniqueness to reflect in your page layout; you can use the Asymmetrical layout since it adopts an out-of-the-box approach toward page design.
This layout arranges site content into horizontal strips. Use this layout to present your audience with various products or services.
This is a piece of non-negotiable advice. You must be able to tweak the website template using a simple drag-and-drop feature. Without customization features, a website template is useless.
The best website templates allow users to customize the color scheme, logo, header design, content, page backgrounds, menu bar, page layout, header image, font style, etc.
When you opt for free templates, you automatically trade off your access to 24/7 customer support.
Templates are prone to system malfunction. Since many website providers barely allow users to switch templates after publishing their sites, you might be stuck with a bugged website template with no hope of contacting a support team that can help you fix the bugs or errors.
In addition, website builder platforms don’t allow users to transform their templates on a code level, meaning even if you want to bear the cost of hiring a programmer in the future to rectify the system errors, you cannot because external intervention is not allowed.
Please note that not all paid templates have customer support.
The closer the template is to your field, the easier it is to personalize. Don’t buy a photography website template and complain that it’s not looking “medical.”
Most template designers have researched and understand what a physical therapist would need instead of what a football blogger would like. Go for templates that were designed for your field or, better still, a field related to physical therapy.
Ask yourself these four questions before settling for a website template:
Without applying your brand assets to your website, there’s no way your website will resonate with your audience. The uniqueness of your brand is a quality that must be reflected on your website, clinic, wears, banners, worker’s ID, and any other item with your company name on it.
Your brand assets include brand name, logo, slogan, tagline, audio, color palette, videos, photographs, typography, etc. Some of your brand assets can be patented, while a few others can’t be patented.
It is one thing to divert traffic to your landing page via social media campaigns. It is another thing to convert site visitors into long-term customers. Your physical therapy website template is to your online customers what your office is to offline clients.
I need you to put yourself in the position of your clients for once. Imagine being welcomed into a PT clinic without treatment tables, step stools, mirrors, or waiting room furniture. Then, you look up and read an ad on the TV with the message, “feel relaxed.” To be honest, will you feel relaxed in any form? The true answer is no. A bad website template is the same as an empty clinic.
Testimonials perform miracles in the minds of clients. People love to follow growth; hence you must add testimonials from your previous clients. Due to medical laws, you might choose not to have identifying information attached.
In addition, include popular publications where your brand has been mentioned or referenced. It might be a local newspaper, the New York Times, WSJ, Vogue, or Tech Crunch.
Your website is the most important tool in your marketing arsenal as a physical therapist. It is the center of your online campaign, doubling as an electronic business card when a physical card isn’t within your reach.
You cannot afford to neglect your company’s website even if you have a big social media following. Social media platforms come and go.
My Space and Vine used to be the rave of the moment, but no one longer cares about these apps. Unlike ephemeral social media sites, you have total control over your website’s lifespan, design, and content. You can choose to keep your website up forever.
Also, your website can serve as an unlimited funnel for thousands, if not millions, of Google users searching for your region's best physical therapy clinic.
Don’t forget that your website should serve as a guide for clients throughout their buying cycle. Let that little piece of information direct you when choosing your website template.