Encouraging Longer Visits

In real life, long visits to your home or even your practice may not be all that welcome, but on the Internet they should be encouraged. The longer that you can keep a person on your website, the better. Visitors to your site become more comfortable with you and your services and begin to trust you more the longer they remain on your site. When it comes to Internet advertising for cosmetic surgeons, this means that those long-staying visitors will be more likely to become actual patients.

Many people know by now the importance of lengthening their visitors' stays on their website. In fact, there are all sorts of tactics to do just that. Some websites will disable the browser's back button, display a pop-up window after you've closed your browser, or display pop-up after pop-up. While these tactics may, indeed, keep visitors on your site longer, they'll do nothing to ingratiate yourself with them and will make sure that they never return to your site again.

There are other, kinder ways to encourage longer visits on your site, including the following:

• Content. Make sure that your website has lots of valuable, free content that is regularly updated. You can include articles about new updates in procedures and techniques, helpful information for patients, and so on. Provided that it's interesting and that it's what people want, good content can keep visitors reading for hours on your site. Further, updated content encourages visitors to return again and again.
• Patient Stories. You could look at patient stories as a step beyond testimonials. Some of your patients may very well be willing to write a story about their experience with plastic surgery. This can be very helpful, not to mention interesting, for visitors to your site.
• Forum. Most people love forums and message boards. Visitors can spend hours looking through posts and reading about other people's questions, concerns, advice, and so on. In addition, forums encourage visitors to come back to your site.
• Poll/Survey. Most everyone loves a poll or survey. People love to see what others are thinking and doing. You have to be a little careful with polls and surveys when it comes to Internet advertising for cosmetic surgeons because you want your site to remain professional. As such, make sure that your polls are of the silly, funny variety, but are instead about plastic surgery. For instance, you could poll visitors to find out how many women have considered breast augmentation or how many men have considered hair transplantation.
• Video. No doubt many potential patients would like to see a video of an actual procedure and what exactly occurs.
• Staff Introductions. Most likely you are not a practice unto yourself but have some staff members working alongside of you. Include some staff introductions on your site. This will add a very personal feeling to your site and help visitors to feel more at ease and comfortable. You can even get a bit casual and even funny by including fun quotes from staff members, stories, experiences and so on.