Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey there, it's Darcy
Sullivan from Propel Marketing
and Design and the ClinicMarketing Podcast.
Thank you so much for listeninghere.
I think you're going to enjoythis clip.
It's from a popular episode inour archives, don't forget.
You can leave a review oniTunes.
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It helps spread the word aboutthis podcast.
(00:22):
All right, let's get into theepisode.
Today we're doing a little bitof website rehab as we dive into
12 things clinic owners mustremove from their websites
immediately.
So this week, today is Thursday.
I had intended to record thisepisode on Monday but got a
(00:45):
nasty cold.
As you can tell, I still have alittle bit of congestion, so I
apologize for that.
But in the past three daysMonday, tuesday, wednesday we
still did a number of discoverycalls with clinic owners and
during these discovery calls Ican tell you that 12 of the
(01:07):
things that we're sharing todaythe 12 things clinic owners must
remove from their websitesimmediately I saw repeatedly
this week.
Now, if you are a clinic ownerand you're interested in us
looking at your website, lettingyou know how we can help you
from an SEO and user experiencedirection, you can visit
(01:31):
propalyourcompanycom and clickbook a discovery call.
As a clinic owner.
You know the importance of yourwebsite, of your website.
When people go to your website,we want to make sure that they
have a great experience a userexperience we call this UX and
(01:53):
that they take the actions thatwe want them to take, and today
that's what we're diving into.
So up on the list of number onefor the 12 things that you
should remove from your websiteimmediately is the old-fashioned
homepage slider.
(02:14):
While a homepage slider mightseem like a dynamic way to
showcase multiple messages orpromotions at one time, it can
often leave the visitor feelingconfused or distracted and,
let's be honest, nobody isclicking through to go from
slide to slide to slide.
(02:36):
Instead, focus on having aclear and concise messaging and
including imagery that reflectsthat messaging.
Number two vague headers, andthis is extremely, extremely
important on your homepage.
We've talked about this before,but if your header, if somebody
(03:00):
arrives on your website andyour header is just like, oh,
helping you feel better, well,that doesn't let me know what
you do or where you offer yourservices, versus something like
providing chiropractic care tothe greater Nashville area.
See how, in the clearer headingthat I understand what you do,
(03:24):
you can have a subheading thatgoes into more detail, but we
want to make sure that yourheaders are very clear to help
ensure accuracy of who you areand what you offer, especially
on that homepage.
This leads us to number three.
(03:45):
We want to make sure, whenpeople come to your website, if
they do not feel good, that youdo not make them feel worse.
This means, if you are achiropractor or a massage
therapist or a physicaltherapist, if you are anybody
who deals with potentialpatients who could suffer from
(04:08):
headaches, we do not want tomake their headaches worse when
they visit your website.
As someone who suffers frommigraine, I can tell you there
are so many times when I visitclinic websites where my head
feels worse because they've usedmaybe aggressive bright colors,
(04:30):
tiny fog, or they've got fastloading videos or things that
visually add more discomfort andincrease a headache.
So make sure when you'reputting together your design and
again this goes back to thatslider that we had already
talked about these elements havethe opposite effect of what you
(04:53):
truly want to happen whensomebody comes to your website.
Number four when somebody comesto your website, you want them
to stay on your website andwhile social media icons are
amazing, we do not want themplaced at the very top of the
website.
Placing them at the top of thewebsite can be a distraction.
Somebody can come to yourwebsite and, as soon as they're
(05:16):
thinking about making anappointment with you, see your
Instagram icon at the top, clickon it and get distracted and
never come back to your websiteagain.
All right on to number five.
Number five is using stockphotos that resemble your
competitors.
Obviously, we don't love theidea of using stock photos, but
(05:41):
I get it.
Sometimes you have to, but Iget it.
Sometimes you have to.
And if you do need to usegeneric stock photos which can
happen just make sure, whenyou're on a website searching
for the stock photos, that youdon't use the ones that are
sorted by most popular, becausethose are the ones everybody is
(06:02):
going to be using.
Those are the ones everybody isgoing to be using.
Ideally, it's preferred for youto use unique photos that
really truly represent yourbrand, and if you are planning a
photo shoot or consideringplanning a photo shoot, please
be sure to check out the podcastwe created on planning the
perfect photo shoot to ensurethat your images from a photo
(06:28):
shoot will be website ready.
All right.
Number six slow loading videolibraries.
Oftentimes, clinics like toinclude video libraries as an
asset on their website, which isawesome.
Love that idea.
(06:49):
Now, I'm not videos to theirvideo library, instead of
(07:11):
loading them to YouTube or Vimeoand then embedding them.
Oftentimes, too, what canhappen is that, if they do, load
them to a third-party platformand then embed them, which is
the way to handle that, if theydo too many on one page, it can
(07:35):
slow things down.
So keep that in mind if youfeel like you want a video
library.
There are a number of differentways to handle this.
One test how quick the loadspeed is right to make sure that
it looks correct and that itmodifies itself so that, if
(07:57):
somebody's looking at them on alooking at your website on a
cell phone, that the videosdon't get cut off.
That can be an issue as well,so you want to make sure that
they display correctly and thatthey load quickly.
If you come to an instance where, again, you're not loading
(08:19):
these videos directly to yourwebsite, you're loading them,
preferably to YouTube or Vimeo.
If you load them to YouTube andthen you've got a page full of
videos and you feel like they'restill a little slow, what you
can do is organize them in a waywhere you have them grouped by
category so let's just say youhave a back pain, neck pain,
(08:42):
shoulder pain, etc.
As your groupings and embed themost popular one and then,
under it, include the link tothe other videos associated with
that library.
That's one way that you cankeep a nice clean look and feel.
The other option, which a lotof people are using, is to
(09:05):
instead link the tab that saysvideos to your YouTube page.
And if you decide to go thatroute, what I would suggest are
a few things One, that you havethat link open in a new window
so that if somebody leaves yourwebsite and goes there, that
your website tab is still open.
And then two is that, withinYouTube, that you create a
(09:30):
playlist and that you havethings nicely organized and
nicely labeled so people canfind what they're looking for.
Okay, number seven.
Number seven low quality orduplicate website content.
A while back we did an episodeon canned content and how to
(09:55):
handle canned content.
You can jump back and eitherlook in the show notes for this
episode or search canned contentthrough the podcast and find
that episode.
But we want to make sure thatyou're not creating content just
for the sake of content, orthat you have duplicate content,
or that you have very vaguecontent that really isn't
(10:21):
original to your business anddoesn't showcase what you
actually offer and yourpersonality.
Number eight pdf content thatshould be web content, and I've
got a couple examples of this.
Um, one would be a flyer.
Like you don't want to take aflyer pdf that maybe showcases a
(10:42):
new service that you'reoffering and just take that and
put it on a page on your websiteand think that all of a sudden,
google is going to find you forthe terms that are on that
graphic, even if you convert itto a JPEG, so we could actually
(11:02):
even say to a JPEG, so we couldactually even say PDF content
that should be web content, orimages that should actually be
web text content.
We want to make sure that youconvert that content into a
web-friendly form and integrateit into your website to help you
with the findability factor.
That doesn't mean that youcan't link to the PDF.
(11:26):
It just means that you shouldactually have that text on your
website and laid out in a waythat Google can find it and that
it's optimized and easy to read.
Now, this does not mean that,for example, if you are a
chiropractor and you recentlypurchased a laser, that you take
the laser brochure that wasprovided to you from another
(11:50):
company and just word for word,use the exact wording that they
supplied on that PDF or brochureand turn it into website
content.
You want to own that contentAgain.
This goes back to number seven.
You want to make sure that it'snot low quality, low quality
(12:10):
content, that it's content thatactually reflects your brand and
your offering.
Okay, number nine autoplayvideos with sound.
Autoplay videos with sound.
Ooh, this one's the worst.
Think about it.
Let's pretend that you are atwork and you're sitting in a
(12:31):
cubicle and you're supposed tobe focusing on one thing, but
instead you go to a websitebecause you're looking for
something else and all of thesudden a video starts playing
that you shouldn't be listeningto.
So we want to make sure thatyou don't have videos that are
autoplay with sounds.
Number 10, pop-ups that don'tserve a purpose.
(12:55):
If I'm coming to your clinic'swebsite for the first time and I
don't know much about yourorganization, there's no reason
that I'm going to just want togenerically sign up for your
email list.
So having aggressive pop-upsthat just say sign up for our
email list are really noteffective and, in fact, again
(13:17):
provide a bad user experience.
Instead, if you are going toinclude pop-ups, have them be
with a purpose.
So what does that look like?
Well, maybe, if I am on a blogpost that talks about something
related to running, a pop-upmight be get our I don't know
(13:45):
video collection, or sign up toreceive our three stretches to
help you prevent injury beforeyou run Something that actually
relates to the content that's onthat page, right?
So this might mean, if there issomething on a back pain page
that then the pop-up contentrelates to sign up to get fill
(14:12):
in the blank that relates to theproblem, which would be back
pain.
Again, we want to make surethat we're not using just those
vague pop-ups of sign up foremail list without giving them
any reason why to sign up foryour email list.
Next step broken links.
(14:33):
Broken links are frustratingand they're bad for SEO search
engine optimization.
So regularly you want to do anaudit of your website and make
sure that you don't have brokenlinks internally and links that
are linking outside of yourwebsite that are also broken.
(14:53):
One of the easiest ways to dothis is there's a handy dandy
free tool atwwwbrokenlinkcheckercom where
you can simply enter in yourwebsite and it'll spit out a
list of any broken links.
And finally, ooh, and this oneI saved it for last for a very
(15:16):
good reason.
It is one of the worst userexperience items that directly
correlates with getting peoplein your front door, and that's
conversion confusion.
And let me repeat that again,conversion confusion.
This is when you go to awebsite and there's multiple
(15:40):
actions that you can take, notjust, oh, you can click on
different pages of the websiteand there's a menu structure
that has different links, butwhere it buttons that are book,
an appointment book, a freeassessment schedule, a call Book
, an appointment book, a freeassessment schedule, a call.
(16:01):
When there's too many optionsall in one screen at the same
time, it gets very confusing andthis also, I see this a lot too
with, again, the social mediaicons at the top of the page.
So yesterday, for instance, Iwas on a discovery call with a
chiropractor and we were lookingat their homepage and in their
(16:22):
homepage, above the top menu,they had a call to action for a
free assessment.
They had a button, but it wasthe phone number, which was a
click to call, and then they hadthe social media icons and then
(16:42):
they had the social media iconsand then below that they had
the traditional header menu withthen a call to action to book
an appointment.
And then in there luckily theydidn't have a slideshow, but
they had a huge hero image withwith text, vague tests, vague
text that didn't state theirlocation or exactly what they
did, and then two calls toaction there and all of a sudden
(17:04):
the person visiting yourwebsite's like what do I do?
What do I do for this?
And on top of that, they were aclinic that offered, while they
were a chiropractic clinic,they also offered additional
non-chiropractic services.
So somebody landing there justexpecting to see chiropractic
(17:26):
information is like wait,there's a call to action to take
this or for this service at thesame time as a call to action
to book a chiropracticappointment.
It can be very confusing.
So if you just kind of keep iteasy with a book now button or,
(17:47):
obviously, if you are onspecific pages where you're
diving into specific servicesthat you offer really clear
actions or defined of what youwant people to take.
So, in conclusion, by removingthese 12 website issues that we
commonly see, you can improvethe experience for people when
(18:09):
they come to your website,increase your brand credibility
and drive more conversions.
So take the time to evaluateyour website and make any
necessary adjustments to ensurethat it is effectively
representing your clinic and thevalue that you provide your
visitors, patients and potentialpatients.
(18:34):
And again, let's go over.
Let's wrap it up with reviewingwhat those 12 items were.
That would be your homepageslider, vague headers, social
media icons at the top of yourwebsite.
Again, they're absolutely finedown at the bottom, but let's
not keep them at the top.
Headache triggering elements,crazy colors, tiny text fonts,
(18:58):
fast videos, those types ofelements, image issues that
include using stop, photos thatlook just like your competition,
video libraries that take toolong to load, low quality canned
content or duplicate content,pdf content that should actually
be written content on yourwebsite.
(19:19):
And again, the same thing cango for an image that should
actually be written content onyour website Auto play videos
with sound Pop-ups without apurpose, broken links and
finishing it off with thatconversion confusion.
We would love to hear from youas to what topics you would like
(19:42):
to hear from us coming up andwhat issues you are currently
having when it comes to yourwebsite, seo and content
marketing.
You can find us on Instagram atPropel your Company, and again,
if you're interested in signingup for us to take a look at
your website and chat about wayswe can help you improve your
(20:04):
website and SEO, please visitpropellyourcompanycom to book a
discovery call.