Does a small dental clinic need a website at all
An honest answer from people who build them. For a lot of small clinics, not yet, and there are two cheaper things to fix first.
The short answer
Not first. If your Google listing is unclaimed and your Facebook page has not been posted on since last year, a website will not save you. She finds you through the listing and judges you on the page, and a site nobody is sent to is a brochure in a drawer.
Fix those two, then read the rest of this.
When a listing and a page are enough
A single clinic, in one town, doing general dentistry for the people who live nearby, does not usually need a website to be busy. The listing puts you on the map with your hours and your reviews. The page lets her message you and see that somebody answers.
Between them she can find you, judge you and reach you, which is everything a website would have done for her.
The website is not the thing that gets found. It is the thing she reads once she has already found you.
When you actually need one
There are four cases where the answer flips.
- More than one branch, because the page and the listing get confusing fast and something has to hold the whole clinic together.
- Work people research before they commit, like braces, aligners or implants, where she wants to read for twenty minutes before she messages anybody.
- Corporate or HMO patients, and employers, who look for something that reads as an established business rather than a Facebook page.
- Running ads, because sending paid clicks to a Facebook page wastes most of them.
If none of those are you, the money is better spent elsewhere this year and we will tell you so.
What the site actually has to do
Almost nothing, and it has to do it fast. One page is enough for most clinics.
- The clinic name, the address with a landmark, and a map link.
- The hours, including Saturday.
- What you do, in the words patients use.
- Prices, or starting prices, for the routine things.
- A book button and a number that somebody answers.
Anything past that is decoration. Nobody has ever chosen a dentist because of the welcome paragraph.
The two things that kill it
Slow, and no way to book. She is on mobile data, standing somewhere, with a phone that is three years old. A site that takes six seconds to appear has already lost her, and huge photos are almost always the reason.
The second is a site that tells her everything and then leaves her to work out how to get in touch. Every screen should have the way to book or message within a thumb's reach.
Own the domain yourself
Whoever builds the site, make sure the domain is registered in the clinic's name with your own email on the account. It is the one part that is genuinely hard to get back later, and clinics do lose their address when they part ways with whoever set it up.
Ask for the login the day it is bought. Anyone reasonable will hand it over without a fuss.
Where to start this week
Search your own clinic name on your phone and look at what comes back before any website would appear. If the listing is wrong or the page is quiet, that is this week's job, and it is free.
If you have already done both and you are in one of the four cases above, then a site is worth building, and it should be one page, fast, with a book button. We build them, and if we think you do not need one yet we will say so.