In working with several dental practices in Scottsdale wiith their website design, search engine optimization, usability, and overall marketing, it's quite evident many need redesigns, as their sites are not doing their jobs in attracting new patients.

There is only ONE reason to have a website. To get people to take a specific action. If you're a Scottsdale dentist, you want them to call your practice. That's it! Anything else is secondary.

What I see here in the valley is cluttered websites that only confuse the visitor. When you confuse or frustrate a web visitor, they hit the back button, and will never come back. All that hard work (ie. SEO, PPC, offline advertising) all for not!

I've seen $10,000 websites that were terrible! What I mean is they did not serve a purpose other than to the owner themselves. We call these "vanity websites". They're all about the owner, and not about the visitor.

When someone does a search, and reaches your site, they want to know in 5 seconds, what's in it for me. If you don't accomplish that basic goal, you lose. Your visitor will go to your competitors site and call them.

Here in Arizona, especially Scottsdale there are dozens and dozens of cosmetic dentists within a 5 mile radius of Scottsdale Rd and Shea Blvd. This means more competition to get attract those patients.

Social Proof

Nowadays, it's all about social proof. On a dental site, people want to see before and after pictures. That's the telltale. They want to be reassured you can do a good job. Another great strategy is video testimonials. When people can see happy patients, they are more apt to call you.

Statistics show that 87% of web visitors to a dental site are female. Knowing this before you design your new website will help you make it appealing to women. When you do this, you are making your practice more desirable than your competition.

Scottsdale is all about vanity. Your potential patients expect beautiful, functional and easy to take action websites. You better give it to them or they are gone!

Location

For local searches people want to know quickly where your practice is located. They don't want to have to look for it. It should be prominent on your homepage. Preferrably with a map, so they have a good, quick visual of where they have to go if they hired you as their dentist.

Also, you're not going to get someone living in Ahwatukee to drive up to North Scottsdale for dental work. Nor will someone in Anthem come down.

Call To Action

If you're a dentist, you've got to focus on dental website marketing if you want to grow your practice. With your website, I want you to think of what do you want them to do? For dental practices as mentioned earlier... it's call your office. So like the location, don't make them look for your number. Make it big, easy-to-find, and preferably high up on your homepage (and every page on your site for that matter).

When you tell people what you want them to do, they will do it. It's a crazy idea, I know.

I've only covered a few critical items for a proper website design for dental practice, but hopefully I've brought these important elements front and center in your mind.