The elements of design are often overlooked by marketers; however, design can ultimately make or break the performance of any website. Especially in the case of home health care companies, it’s crucial that your website strives to make an immediate emotional connection with its visitors. The question remains: what design elements should your site emphasize in order to optimize its performance and make those connections happen?
Stand Out From the Crowd
The home health care industry is crowded with competition; therefore, you need to do everything you can to make sure that your site stands out from the crowd. “Be different” may seem like incredibly obvious advice, but there are actionable steps you can take to ensure that your brand’s personality shines at a glance. For starters, you can leverage any combination of the following:
- Visual content, including pictures or videos of your practice, as means of giving your site a personal touch and giving your site a more “human” vibe
- Colors that count, as the psychology of color is incredibly important to our visitors on a subconscious level: for example, consider that blues, greens and purples represent a calm, trustworthy color scheme
- Customer-driven language: your marketing language on-site should drive home the point that the purpose of your practice is to help the customers first and foremost
Give Your Pages a Purpose:
You need to make sure that each and every page of your site, from your landing page and contact forms and beyond, has a purpose. Many modern marketers make the mistake of splashing cash on a site without understanding their goals. Are you trying to build more leads? Rank for competitive keywords? Grow your email list? The sooner you understand your site’s goals, the better you can refine its design.
Crystal Clear CTAs:
Sometimes your visitors need a bit of direction. Don’t beat around the bush when it comes to what sort of actions you want your users to take. If you want comments on your blog posts, for example, simply ask for them. If you’re looking for more clicks and conversions, you need to emphasize your CTAs rather than hide them.
There’s no harm in being straightforward, especially as today’s users have limited attention spans. Whether you use a combination of loud buttons, bright colors or bold fonts to make your calls-to-action pop, make sure that each page of your site gives your visitors something to do.
Responsive Design:
Given the massive influx of mobile traffic to any given site thanks to the smart phone boom, don’t neglect that benefits of responsive design. In short, you should strive to make sure that your site looks like a million bucks for visitors on-the-go. Failing to cater to mobile traffic could translate into missed opportunities for potential business.
Adopt a “Less is More” Mentality: When it comes to your on-site content and pages, think “less is more.” The dangers of overloading your visitors are three-fold:
- Busy sites with too much going on in terms of imagery or chunks of text could ultimately distract your visitors from your CTAs, causing them to hit the “back” button
- Site slowdown is a huge area of concern: given that modern users expect sites to load in a matter of seconds, you simply can’t afford to have a bloated site
- Don’t overdo it: a simpler site with a few pages of valuable, straightforward information will always be more effective than a site filled to the brim with thin content
Make Yourself Available:
Don’t take a one-size-fits-all approach to having users contact you. By opening yourself to multiple means of contact, you can reach all of your potential business versus a select few. For example, your site should integrate the social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter for users looking to to pop in and say “hi.” Additionally, implement an email contact form in conjunction with an actual email address where users can contact you directly (consider that some users simply don’t trust contact forms).
Present Yourself as a Resource:
Perhaps the biggest mistake that businesses make online is failing to present themselves as a resource. Your site should boast legitimately useful information (instead of keywords and fluff), either in the form of blogs, FAQs or infographics, as means of educating your visitors. Today’s users want authenticity and the education, not a wordy sales pitch.
Whether you’re thinking of building a website yourself or simply want to make sure that you’re on the right track, check out our web design checklist.