Episode Transcript
Key Takeaways
- The more you tell, the more you sell; this applies to any industry.
- Your website must focus on the patient, not on you.
- People do read online; engaging content is crucial.
- Displaying prices on your website builds trust with potential clients.
- The medium is not the message; the message is what converts prospects to clients.
Introduction
The more you tell, the more you sell. And that’s what you should be thinking about. And that’s true for any industry that you’re in. The more you tell, the more you sell.
Welcome to another episode of Practice Perfect, the podcast for medical professionals and anybody running a professional services practice as opposed to a bricks and mortar store.
Designing a Cosmetic Surgery Website
Today, we’re going to talk about how to design a cosmetic surgery website. We’re talking about this today because there are a lot of myths and misconceptions and misinformation that you’ll find on the Internet and from consultants and web designers, web developers. Everybody’s got an idea about how to design a cosmetic surgery website, but very few of them are really in the business of dealing with cosmetic surgery. They’re not in the business of making you money.
And that’s what it really boils down to at the end of the day. Your website has to produce for you. It has to get you the results that you need. It has to convert your prospects to contacts, and it has to reassure them that you’re the right person for the job.
The Patient’s Journey
All right, let’s get right into it. The first concept that I want you to understand is that your website has to talk to the patient, and it’s not about you. We’re going to get deeper into that, but that concept is key. The website is not about you.
Your patient is the hero in her own story.
Now, I know that may sound counterintuitive. It may sound in opposition to what you may have been told by even consultants from companies like Allergan. They have their business consultants, and they’re usually advised that the patient is looking for the doctor. And I’m here to tell you that that’s simply not true.
Content is King
So before we get into the why and how of designing the menu and the structure and the pages, I’d first like to start with the content. The most important thing on your website is going to be the legibility of the content on the website. All right. Content is king, no matter what industry you’re in.
Content is king, no matter what industry you’re in.
And being able to read and engage that content is very, very important. That means keeping the white text on colored backgrounds to a minimum. Legible text is still black on white, the same as it’s been for hundreds of years. It’s black text on white paper, light colored paper.
Myth: People Don’t Read
Which brings us to our first myth. You may have heard that people don’t read. This is a common thing that’s told by all sorts of consultants and web designers. And I’m here to tell you that it’s flat out not true. They can argue it until it’s blue in the face.
The Buying Journey
And I want to try to prove this to you. I promised that I would give you some reasoning to prove it to you. And here’s how I know people read. I want you to start thinking about the last large purchase that you made. It has to be an involved purchase, a car, a house, a new bathroom, a long vacation, an expensive hotel, that watch you’ve wanted forever and you can finally afford to get.
The Importance of Pricing
Myth number two, you shouldn’t show your price. This is a point of debate between marketers. I can only speak to what I’ve experienced. And I can tell you right now that our philosophy and our design philosophy and our marketing philosophy is one that says that the patient isn’t stupid. She knows what things cost. She doesn’t need to contact you just to find out the price.
There’s also the perception that you’re dishonest when you don’t show your price.
Website Navigation
The next element that I want to tackle is the navigation for the website. And I have a rule of thumb. If I go to any plastic surgeon’s website when they contact us and they ask me to have a look at the site, if I have a look at it and it starts with about us, I know that that plastic surgeon doesn’t get it yet. I know that whoever has built that website doesn’t understand the importance of the consumer’s journey and why she’s there primarily.
Photography and Visuals
Now, telling them about you brings me very nicely into the next topic, which is the photography that you use on the site. And I’m talking primarily about the photos of yourself, right? Your bio pictures, your pictures of you and your staff. I’ll go over some of the typical mistakes that I see online and this I see on a lot of websites.
Technical Considerations
The next element that I’m going to discuss is iFlow. What I mean by iFlow is that a person is attracted to certain elements on a web page, and that will be anything from a headline to a color to a photo to a graphic. Things on that page will draw the eye around the page and how you deal with the iFlow will either increase your conversion rate or decrease your conversion rate.
Conclusion
The last point I want to leave you with is that the medium is not the message. The message is the message, and it’s the message that converts your prospects to clients. What I mean by that is if you are building a beautiful website that impresses everyone and gets you all sorts of compliments, but doesn’t get you sales. That’s a useless website. It’s great for winning your designer awards. It’s great for stroking your ego. But at the end of the day, the bank doesn’t accept ego points. It only takes cash.