BY ROD SOLAR AND LAURA LIVESEY

Transcription

1 FIVE THINGS EVERY WEBSITE S HOMEPAGE MUST HAVE To convert more online viitor into patient, include thee element. BY ROD SOLAR AND LAURA LIVESEY According to the Nielen Norman Group, you have 10 crucial econd to capture the attention of a viitor to your webite before he or he click away. Mot viitor leave within 10 to 20 econd. Therefore, your ite homepage mut pa thi value propoition tet: Within 10 econd of firt landing on your page, can a 13- to 15-year-old viitor undertand the following? What do you offer? How will it make my life better? What do I need to do to take the next tep? Thi tet may eem imple, but mot ophthalmologit homepage do not pa it. Include the five element outlined in thi article, and you will have a much higher chance of paing the tet. 1 MUST-HAVE NO. 1: INCLUDE YOUR OFFER ABOVE THE FOLD When I ay your offer, I do not mean a dicount or a deal. I alo do not mean a free conultation or an open evening (although thee are perfectly good call to action). Your offer, in thi context, communicate to the potential patient what he or he will get from you. (We will come back to above the fold in a minute.) We offer viion correction i an offer, but it doe not tand out becaue all of your competitor, by definition, do the ame. We offer expert viion correction i an offer, but it i weak becaue mot propective cutomer aume you are an expert. (Who want amateur viion correction?) We offer expert viion correction in [your city] i a typical offer tatement that earch engine optimization (SEO) minded webite deigner often ugget. Thi i a good offer for earch engine robot, but it doe little to entice human. Mention thi offer below the fold (that i, in a ubheading). Here are three better alternative for your offer: No. 1: Tell people what they get a a reult of buying or uing your ervice. We offer freedom from glae and contact lene. Thi offer i good becaue it peak to a benefit and ay what the cutomer can expect after uing your ervice But thi offer could be better; it peak to what mot people want after viion correction, but it i generic. No. 2: Promie an apirational identity. We ll help you be the bet golfer on the fairway. We ll help you become the bet verion of yourelf. We ll help you face the world free from barrier. You are not elling viion correction. You are elling tranformation from a before tate to an after tate. Before your help, your patient blamed hi or her poor long-game on bad eyeight. Now, after your help, he or he can apire to cut hi or her handicap. Before your help, your patient felt hy in ocial ituation. Now, after your help, he or he can regain the confidence to boldly navigate ocial encounter. No. 3: Promie to olve a problem. We help 99.9% [or whatever number you can prove] of our patient achieve tandard driving viion. We help you chooe the bet eye urgeon in [your city]. SEPTEMBER 2018 CATARACT & REFRACTIVE SURGERY TODAY 59

2 Figure 1. On the average computer, the area above the fold look like thi (image not to cale). What doe above the fold mean? You know what it mean in that old medium, the newpaper: on the top half of the front page, where people will ee it on the newtand. But on the internet, above the fold refer to what the viitor ee before he or he tart to croll down (Figure 1 3). Thi area change from computer to computer, but today the mot popular (19.28% of uer) creen reolution i 1,366 x 768 pixel; 18.6% of uer till ue 1,024 x 766 pixel. Thi alo change between martphone, a hown in Figure 2 and 3. Think of the word above the fold a what you might ay when firt meeting a poible romantic partner; that i, they hould be hort, enticing, and excluively cutomer-centric. The word and picture viitor ee a they croll down are what you want to hare on the firt and econd date. They hould focu on building credibility and hould how potential patient how to book an appointment. Figure 2. On an iphone, the area above the fold look like thi. We offer high-tech viion correction with a peronalized touch. We help you overcome your fear about viion correction. We focu everything on getting you free of your glae and contact lene. We offer afe and effective viion correction affordable to everyone. By the time your viitor arrive at Figure 3. On an Android phone, the area above the fold look like thi. your webite, it i likely he or he know you offer freedom from glae and contact lene. However, chooing a urgeon or clinic i not eay, o you have an opportunity to guide a propective patient through the maze of deciion-making. Highlight your bigget trength in cutomer-centric language to alert your viitor that you are the one they are looking for to olve their problem. Look at your webite and enure that your offer i all of thee thing: Obviou: Set a a large headline and not buried in a paragraph of text; Enticing: Offer a benefit the cutomer get after the ervice and not jut what you do; and Ditinctive: Set you apart from your competitor, ideally promoting your mot ignificant trength (your ability; affability; availability; cope; or, at wort, price). 2 MUST-HAVE NO. 2: HIGHLIGHT OBVIOUS CALLS TO ACTION Conider your webite a a container with the primary purpoe of holding 60 CATARACT & REFRACTIVE SURGERY TODAY SEPTEMBER 2018

3 a call-to-action button. You are in the buine of changing patient live for the better, but you will oon be out of buine if no one can find your call to action. Put your call-to-action button in two place. Put a Book an Appointment button in the top-right corner of your webite; and Repeat the button in the center of the creen, above the fold. The viitor eye will mot likely follow a Z pattern acro your webite (Figure 4), tarting with your logo at the top-left corner, proceeding to your call-to-action button on the top-right corner, another call to action in the middle of the page, and to the bottom of the Z, where your ubheading introduce your revenue tream: that i, the pecific ervice you offer (ee Mut-Have No. 4). Make your call-to-action button tand out in a contrating color that you can ue for every call-to-action button on the webite. Make it one of the brightet color you ue on your webite, and avoid uing that color for anything ele. Ue the ame color and ame text everywhere, again and again, many time on each and every page of your webite. Chooe your mot important call to action (almot alway a variation of Book an Appointment ), and don t clutter the area around the button with imilar looking object (text or icon). Many of the webite we deign alo offer tranitional call to action. Returning to our dating analogy, if your principal call to action i, Will you go on a date with me? your tranitional call to action might be, Can I have your phone number? A tranitional call to action i a leer-value action that we want propective viitor to take. Typically, a Book an Appointment button i the highet value, followed by other Figure 4. The eye follow a Z pattern above the fold. uch Ak for a Callback, Take Thi Free Self-Tet, and Get Your Free Guide. Set your tranitional call-to-action button to the right of your primary call-toaction button in a le bright color, a hown in Figure 5. 3 Look at your webite and enure that you have two call-to-action button above the fold. The firt invite viitor to do what you mot want (ie, Book an Appointment ), and the econd ak them to take a maller tep. MUST-HAVE NO. 3: FEATURE IMAGES OF SUCCESS The word you chooe are crucial, and the picture you chooe mut upport thoe word. Do not pend valuable above-the-fold pace on your homepage diplaying a photo of your building. Your potential patient are not buying your building, o do not wate their attention on thing you do not offer. Similarly, don t lead with an image of yourelf. You are not the hero of your potential patient tory: The patient i. You are the guide, but patient mut ee themelve in the image firt. Feature picture of authentic, miling, happy people who are enjoying the reult of viion correction with you. Very few people want to experience making a phone call, itting in your waiting room, undergoing eye tet, or having eye urgery. Everyone want what come after all of that: enjoying their life after viion correction. Think like a travel company. Don t illutrate the arduou journey. Do airline companie how traveler waiting in line, truggling with heavy luggage, itting in cramped airplane eat, or negotiating with cutom officer? Of coure not! They how traveler enjoying their fantatic detination. 62 CATARACT & REFRACTIVE SURGERY TODAY SEPTEMBER 2018

4 Look at your webite and enure that it how people who look like your patient doing all the thing they want to do after you free them from glae and contact lene. Figure 5. Example of primary and econdary (tranitional) call-to-action button. MUST-HAVE NO. 4: DISPLAY A BITE-SIZED 4 BREAKDOWN OF YOUR REVENUE STREAMS Once you have communicated what you do for people, put your buine hat on and identify how you make money. If you offer laer viion correction (SMILE, LASIK, PRK), find an overall umbrella meage that unifie your different offering. If you provide general ophthalmology, you may want to egment your ervice into age group (eg, under 40 year of age, 40 to 60, 60 and above). Above the fold, tate your unified meage. Thi meage could be omething like the following: Your bet viion begin with a cutomized treatment plan (for a laer viion correction practice). Let u protect your viion at every tage of life (for the general ophthalmology practice). Then, a the viitor croll down the page, you might preent your option a content boxe from which to chooe. For laer viion correction, you might how your option a image of people engaged in pecific activitie that mot align with the ervice benefit. Each of thee content boxe can contain link to new page with pecific meage filtered by different cutomer avatar, the problem they have, the particular plan that uit their need, and aociated torie from patient that upport thee option. The unifying meage, however, i either a cutomized treatment plan or pecific age-appropriate care. You may think that your offering are too divere to communicate clearly. In mot cae, you can find an umbrella theme to unite them. Once you have identified the umbrella meage, you can plan different page that focu on pecific cutomer meaging. The fundamental objective i clarity. The more clear you are on the unifying benefit you offer, the more likely your viitor will ee the path they hould take to find what they eek. Look at your webite and enure that you are directing your viitor to learn more about your three mot eential revenue driver under a unifying theme. MUST-HAVE NO. 5: SHOW 5 VERY FEW WORDS, AND NOT ONE OF THEM SHOULD DEVIATE FROM YOUR CORE MESSAGE People, epecially millennial, rarely read webite they can them. Mot people kip long ection of text becaue they have been trained by marketer to ignore them. Mot marketer write irrelevant and elf-aggrandizing puffery that wate viitor time with vague platitude and hyperbolic claim lacking evidence. Many urgeon ue text that look like thi: A Proud Hitory of Excellence in Eye Care with LASIK and Cataract Surgery in [city]. Since our founding in 1929, the [name of clinic] ha been a leader in eye care diagnotic and urgical procedure. Over the year, our urgeon have done much to pioneer breakthrough treatment o that today we are able to provide the very highet level of patient care poible. The paage above focue excluively on making the clinic and the urgeon the hero of the patient tory. Intead, your webite hould ay omething like thi (in eence): I offer a life without glae. Life without glae i good. You want that life and hould call me now to get it. A your viitor croll down your page, you can ue more word and tell them about your hitory uing evidence and proof from ocial media to highlight your credibility. Not too many word, though. Think about it thi way: Write 10 tweet intead of 10 paragraph. If you want to include more text on your webite to either explain omething in more depth or to boot your ite earch engine optimization, place a Read More link that expand into more text for thoe who are intereted. Thoe who want to know more will click. The ret will call you to learn more, which i what you want mot. Look at your webite and ee if you can do thee thing: Cut half of the word; Replace text with image; Reduce whole paragraph to a few bullet point; and Write horter entence. SEPTEMBER 2018 CATARACT & REFRACTIVE SURGERY TODAY 63

5 BREVITY RULES Brevity i the oul of wit and the heart of lead generation. At the heart of lead generation i the ability to communicate efficiently. That i not eay. It i much harder to communicate meaningfully uing few word. On their homepage, mot clinic ramble on about themelve, hoping omething will connect with conumer. The reality, however, i that your propect will not read that rambling text, epecially if it i all about you and not about them. Like you, your patient are timepoor. They will not do your work for you. They expect to undertand the eence of who you are and what you offer within a few econd. If not, they will not connect to your meage, and they will move on to your competitor webite. It happen every day. So, take your potential patient by the hand and give them a fat and eay way to realize that they are in the right place: Include your key offer above the fold; Tell people exactly what you want them to do uing a clear call to action; Show them image of people (jut like them) enjoying their live after urgery; Don t make propect dig deep to figure out what your top three ervice are; and Be brief in your cutomer-centric explanation. Follow thee five pointer and you will have a ignificantly more effective homepage. A long a you tay on meage, more people will read more of what you write, and you will convert more viitor into lead. n ROD SOLAR n Director, LiveeySolar Practice Builder n rod@liveeyolar.com n Financial dicloure: Employee (LiveeySolar Practice Builder) LAURA LIVESEY n Director, LiveeySolar Practice Builder n laura@liveeyolar.com n Financial dicloure: Employee (LiveeySolar Practice Builder) FIX THESE WEBSITE FLAWS NOW By David Evan, PhD, MBA Simple webite coding error can have catatrophic conequence on your hard-fought earch ranking, traffic, and revenue. I your ite at rik? Off-the-helf webite are eay to implement, but, in many cae, thee platform include underlying coding iue that are not earch-engine friendly. Thi i compounded by the fact that web developer who build a webite with off-the-helf platform typically do not have the killet required to write code to offet thee critical earch engine optimization (SEO) iue or even detect the problematic internal coding problem. Clean code can enure the maximum return on thi invetment. Here, I hare three flaw that, once fixed with my call to action uggetion, can help to enure that your webite i functioning at it bet ability. Flaw No. 1: Index Bloat Google i ruthle in penalizing ite with duplicate page or an exceive number of low-quality page with limited or no content, only image. Unfortunately, many of the popular webite platform uch a WordPre and SquareSpace automatically create duplicate page for blog pot, individual gallery photo, and graphic image. Alo, hacker are contantly attempting to add multiple low-quality page to thee ite. It i not unuual to find hacked ite with twice a many pirated page a primary content page. So-called index bloat problem can be fixed by either removing the page, or, if they are needed, de-indexing them. De-indexing involve placing code on thee page telling Google not to include them in it index. Call to action: Ak your SEO company to regularly track the number of page in your Google index and to remove or de-index the duplicate or low-quality one. By regularly checking, it will be able to detect any additional page due to hacking activity. Flaw No. 2: Exceive 404 Error A 404 error occur when a webite viitor or earch engine crawler attempt to viit a page on the ite that doe not exit. If a webite viitor imply type in the incorrect URL for the ite, ranking are not affected. However, if the error occur due to improper code, Google will penalize the ite ranking. Thee iue can be readily identified through a broken link report and the 404 error report within Google Webmater Tool. Thee hould be checked regularly becaue off-the-helf platform often automatically create link within the ite, and ometime the link are incorrect, reulting in 404. Call to action: Ak your SEO company if it regularly review 404 error report and fix the 404. If it doen t, tell them they need to tart. Flaw No. 3: Slow Loading Speed Site load peed ha become an important ranking factor for Google. Eaily fixable coding iue can caue low load peed. The mot common iue are image ize and out-of-date plug-in. Thee can be cured by enuring that all image on the ite are compreed and by regularly updating plug-in. Call to action: Ak your SEO company to compre all image on your webite and to enure that the plug-in are updated at leat two to three time a year. n DAVID EVANS, PhD, MBA n CEO, Ceatu Media Group, San Diego n devan@ceatu.com n Financial dicloure: None 64 CATARACT & REFRACTIVE SURGERY TODAY SEPTEMBER 2018