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Advertising For Cosmetic Surgeons: Is Your Site In Need Of An Overhaul?
If you already have a website for your plastic surgery practice, it's possible that it may be in need of a few changes, maybe even a complete overhaul. Your website design may be outdated, you may not be getting the traffic you want, or your conversion rates may be low. The following are sings that your site may be in need of an overhaul:
- Free Domains. If your domain is a free one, it may be so long that you have no hope of ever including it on printed material, let alone having people remember it. Buying a domain address your own is well worth the lit bit of extra cost. They're not only easy to remember and more manageable overall, they lend your website far more credibility and professionalism.
- Outdated Graphics. Outdated graphics may include a revolving globe, beveled horizontal line separator, or an animated mail box. Because the Internet is constantly changing, graphics that were popular just a few years ago can make your site look dated and unprofessional. While your site doesn't need to be the perfect example of cutting edge technology, you should at least avoid cheesy or amateurish graphics.
- Hit Counters. Hit counters may have been popular years ago, but they have a bit of an amateurish quality today. Even worse is if your hit counter publicizes your lack of traffic by saying You are the 46 th visitor to this site'.
- Weak Copy. It's important that your website start right off the bat with headlines and powerful copy that gets visitors' attention and motivates them to action. An outdated intro like Welcome to our site. Please bookmark our site' likely won't be powerful enough.
- Outdated Copy. Frequently updating your content is essential to your website's success. If your content is horribly outdated, maybe even inaccurate, get rid of and provide some fresh new content. Worse is if you display when your content was last updated. This is a great feature to have, but not if it reads Last Updated December, 1997'.
- Covert Contact Information. It's important to remember that the main objective of your website is to get your visitors to contact you and become your patients. Without obvious, easy-to-find contact information, that's unlikely to occur. Further, your contact information makes you look more credible and inspires your visitors' trust. Make sure that every page of your website has some contact information, your telephone number and email address at a minimum. Also make sure that every page has a link to your contact page with further information as well as a mailto link or contact form.
- No Forms. It's essential that you do what you can to get your visitors' contact information. That means that your website needs a form, a form to schedule a consultation, sign up for an email newsletter, get further information, ask questions or get advice, anything to get your visitors' contact information, an email address at the very least. Some visitors to your site won't provide you with their contact information, but it's well worth your efforts to try. Be sure to display your privacy policy and only ask for personal information you absolutely need.
- No Web Analysis Tools. It's essential that you have some way of analyzing the traffic to your site and where your traffic is coming from. There are many software tools available to help you evaluate your Internet marketing efforts so that you know what is working and what is not. You should be able to gather information like the referring sites, search engine traffic, the keywords that are getting people to your site, the pages people are frequenting in your site and those they aren't, the amount of time visitors are spending on your site, and so on.
- Less Than Successful. If your website is less than successful, if you've gotten no leads within a reasonable amount of time, or have very few visitors actually contacting you for your services, your website is definitely in need of an overhaul. It may be your website design, your site promotion, any number of things. A close inspection of your site will help you to determine where changes are needed.
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