Many medical sites try to conform to a stereotypical site design that appears professional. While showing professionalism is important, these same sites often lack focus and do not do enough to engage their visitors. With increasing competition, it’s becoming more important to do more with your website and optimize it to get users to tune in and interact. Here are some great tactics you can use to increase the user engagement for your medical site.
1. Go with a Less Is More Approach to Design
Too many medical sites make the mistake of giving their visitors too many choices. It’s understandable why they do it. They want the visitor to check out their about us page to learn more about their practice, background, research and staff. The aim is to obviously prove credibility. However, you have to limit the choices and provide a clear navigation path for the users to follow. Many medical sites are getting better user engagement with a simple site that states the benefits of making an appointment or selling a free trial for a product.
2. Use Secondary and Multiple Calls to Action
According to Hubspot, secondary CTAs can be a great tool for saving lost conversion opportunities. For example, if you’re trying to make a sale, try offering a free sample at other sections of your content or sales page. That may capture prospects that may be not be ready to make a purchase. Or if the purpose of the site is to set appointments, offer a device to self-book on open time slots. This is a great way to involve users that are still doing their research and assessing whether or not to do business with you.
3. Reach Out to Audiences that Are Often Ignored
If you want to engage more than your core audience, then you have to reach out to audiences or segments of your core audience that are often ignored. For example, Halocigs, an e-cigarette and vaping company addresses new vapers on their main page by offering a link called “New to Vaping.” When a user clicks on that link, they’re taken to a halocigs vape starter kit page where every aspect of vaping is explained to educate the user. Very few websites and only think about addressing their core audience.
4. Offer Rewards for Interaction
If you can incentivize interaction, then you can easily increase your user engagement metrics. For example, a dental office can offer a free checkup if the user calls in with a promotion code. A medical eCommerce site can offer reward points for registering an account or getting users to share their products on their social media accounts. In order to make this work, you have to offer something of value to the user for taking an action that is natural to them. By offering a free checkup, the user will be more likely to make the appointment right away rather than look for other dental offices.
5. Use Live Chat to Interact with Users
Many medical sites still aren’t using live chat on their websites. Tagove reports that 47% of online shoppers are more likely to buy if they could talk to an online assistant. It makes sense for medical sites to use live chat as well. Users want a quick response to complicated questions and feel less pressured to talk with a live chat operator than calling on the phone. Not only will using live chat increase user engagement, it will also increase your conversion rates and consequently your profitability.
The bottom line is that medical websites need to do more to engage their visitors. While having a professional design is important, you need to engage your audience if you want to make an impact with your site. Increasing user engagement also helps improve conversion rates which is important if you’re advertising on display networks.