Web Credibility
Web
credibility is all about ensuring that you and your website come across
as knowledgeable and trustworthy to your visitors. This is important
for any Internet business, but it may very well be even more important
when it comes to Internet advertising for cosmetic surgeons.
After all, visitors to your site – your potential patients –
are not only looking to spend thousands of dollars but are also entrusting
their health and well-being to you.
According to recent studies, only 52% or so of Internet users believe
the information they find online to be credible. Further, statistics
show that being able to trust the information found on a site is a very
important factor in determining whether or not to visit that site for
four out of five users.
While it’s clear that web credibility is essential, many websites
out there fail to establish this credibility. Even worse is that many
of the steps that you can take to increase your level of credibility
are very simple ones. The following guidelines can help you to ensure
that your website is a credible one:
- Show visitors that you and your practice really do exist.
While this may sound a little strange, it’s important to remember
that just about anyone can put a up website nowadays and pretty much
claim to be anything. Visitors to your site must be able to see that
there is a real surgeon and a real practice behind your website. There
are many ways that you can do this. First, provide detailed contact
information, including a physical address, and make it easy for visitors
to contact you. It’s also a great idea to include photos of you,
your staff, and even your office. You should have information about
you, your education, your qualifications and your experience, and you
might even want to include brief bios for a few key staff members. Though
you should include some contact information on every page of your site,
you can do much of this with an effective ‘About Us’ page
and a ‘Contact Us’ page.
- Back up your statements. Make sure that any points
you make on your website are backed up with hard evidence. For instance,
when detailing your experience and credentials, include links to related
organizations. If you’re board certified by the American Society
of Plastic Surgeons, include a link to their website. If you claim that
all of your patients are happy, satisfied ones, include testimonials
from them.
- Show that you have clients. Any good, credible organization
should be able to prove that they have clients. By so doing, you show
visitors to your site that you’ve offered your services many times
before, that you expect to do so in the future, and that your practice
is an established one. You can achieve this by including a client list,
testimonials, before-and-after pictures, case studies, and the like.
Just be sure that you get permission from previous patients when necessary.
- Make sure your site exudes a sense of professionalism and
confidence. Your website will say a lot about you and your
practice, and visitors to your site will judge you based upon it.
As such, you website must have an appealing, clean, professional design.
Internet users tend to base their first impressions of a website on
its appearance, so make sure that your first impression is a good
one. You can also increase your level of professionalism by providing
valuable content that establishes your expertise and by ensuring that
there are no errors on your site, whether coding errors, spelling
errors, or broken links.
