When we think about dental practice marketing, we think about traditional marketing methods such as giving away flyers and business cards to people lining up to the grocery store counters. We rarely think about this as some sort of an e-commerce business site that also needs Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn to be marketed.
But the days of giving away flyers have long been gone. We are now faced with this delightful conundrum that no matter what we do or how we want to run our businesses, we are ruled by digital marketing.
One of the most important components of dental practice marketing on the internet is making sure that your clinic’s website has a responsive design. It means the site must be mobile-friendly. What exactly does this mean? Responsive design means your website will scale to look great and function well on any device. This was born out of our current practice of using our smartphones for everything we need—from paying bills to booking airline tickets to buying a pair of shoes.
We no longer use our smartphones merely to communicate or check our Facebook feed. It’s much more than that. Google has also realized that responsive websites provide people who search using their smartphones or laptops a better browsing experience.
Have you ever tried to browse through a website that was not optimized for mobile viewing? You do know how annoying is it to constantly scroll up and down and left and right just to read the information we need?
If your website has a responsive design, it will automatically scale its pages according to the device from which it is being viewed from. It gives readers (and potential clients) a seamless experience, making it easier for them to digest and consume the information provided on your website.
Google is also using mobile responsiveness as a ranking factor. No matter how greatly designed your website is, if it’s not mobile-friendly, you will be hard-pressed to find it on Google’s top search results.
There’s nothing Google hates more than recommending websites that will provide a bad experience to its users. That’s essentially why it even warns us before entering an unsecured site. It is mightily protective of its users in that way.
So, as part of your dental practice marketing efforts, do make sure that your website’s design is responsive and that its security certificates are up to date.