Live chat is a feature we don’t normally see on dental websites. While a dental marketing company will primarily make live chat feature an option on the websites of their clients, not everyone can have a dedicated marketing specialist answer questions on live chat. What you can do for your website is to add a third-party live chat that you’ll have to pay a monthly fee to answer questions about your practice and even set appointments for your clients.
On average, only around 3% of those who visit your website will set an appointment with your dental practice and that is because these visits are more reactionary than proactive. When a web visitors lands on your page, they consume the information they can gather there but once they have questions, they would need to seek answers to those questions through the website itself or via blogs and social media.
However, if you have a live chat feature on your website, the customers can simply open the chatbox and ask you directly about the location of your clinic, the hours of operation, the types of insurance policies you accept, and the services and products you offer. They get the information right there and then, and that allows them to decide to sign up for newsletters or book an appointment with your practice.
As a result, the presence of live chat alone on a website allows appointments to increase from 3% to 6% and sometimes, even more than that.
You don’t even have to activate the live chat feature for 24/7. If you don’t have the resources to hire someone to manage the live chat and you’re doing it on your own, you can set it up in a way that the live chat will ask for a prospect’s phone number if there’s no one active to answer the questions. This way, they can get a call from you that will allow them to ask their questions.
So, is it worth the price? Live chat features can go as high as $250 a month. So, let’s say you signed up for that monthly charge. Using the 3% metric, a dental website with 300 visits a month will result in nine appointments. Adding a live chat feature means you have a chance to get five more appointments, of which 2.5 will pay you.
Considering that patients, on average, spend $1,000 a month on the dental procedure, the added feature will give you a $2,500 profit every month. It will increase the longer the feature is available. So yes, the return on investment is compelling, even with the added cost of hiring a professional dental marketing company to handle your marketing for you.