A website is a great first step in establishing your online presence and bringing in more new patients. Once your website has an appealing design, unique content, and accurate contact information, it’s time to see how you can push it further in engaging website visitors and converting them into patients.
Most practices are now considering two features that can help increase the efficacy of their website in attracting and assisting patients: automated patient reviews and online patient scheduling.
Automated Patient Reviews
Reviews from current patients are essential in gaining new patients. In fact, this study found that 85 percent of respondents trust an online review as much as a personal recommendation. This makes it crucial for you to collect reviews from your patients and make the reviews available to website visitors. Positive online reviews also help boost your online presence.
However, it can be time-consuming to personally contact current patients, ask them to review your practice, gain their consent to share their review, and post those reviews online. Using an automated patient review system can greatly simplify this process, making it easy to collect and share reviews. ReviewMe is a website plugin that helps you gather online patient reviews to encourage new patients to visit you and to improve your search engine rankings. You can learn more about ReviewMe and the benefits of automated patient reviews by clicking here or contacting us today.
Online Patient Scheduling
Once your website visitors have read your patients’ positive reviews and learned about your services on your website, the next step for them is to schedule an appointment. The traditional process requires the potential patient to call your office and speak with a staff member to schedule an appointment. Alternatively, they can submit an appointment request form or send an email via your website, after which they must wait to be contacted by your office before they can schedule their appointment.
An easy way to streamline this process is to use online patient scheduling. With this feature, new (and current) patients can access your appointment calendar online, which shows them your open appointment slots. The patient can then select the open appointment that best fits their schedule, and their appointment information is then sent to your practice. This saves time for both the patient and your staff, and it reduces the chance of scheduling errors for both parties.
A recent study found that 42 percent of respondents would rather use online patient scheduling—that’s nearly half of your patient base who would prefer to schedule online! Plus, this survey discovered that while the normal waiting period for a medical appointment is 24 days from when the patient calls to schedule, the average waiting period for online patient scheduling is only eight days. Patients are happier because they get in to see you sooner, and your practice is happier because your schedule stays full.
At AudiologyPlus, we’re happy to help you learn more about automated patient reviews and online scheduling, as well as other tools you can use to improve your website’s patient conversion rate. Contact us today for more information.
The 2 Things Most Practices Are Considering for Their Website
