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.
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It helps spread the word aboutthis podcast.
(00:22):
All right, let's get into theepisode.
Today we are chatting all aboutyour homepage of your clinic's
website, asking does yourhomepage pass the test when it
comes to first impressions?
I think we all know how veryimportant your homepage of your
(00:47):
website is.
After all, usually wheneversomebody ends up on a website
and they're looking around, evenif they don't automatically
land on the homepage theyusually jump over to the
homepage and take a look at it.
And if you look through yourGoogle Analytics, you'll see
(01:07):
that your homepage is mostlikely one of the most visited
pages on your website, if notthe most important.
On top of that, a recentstatement from Google really
showcases the importance ofhomepages, so I don't think it's
any surprise that it'ssomething that we wanted to
(01:30):
tackle on the show.
So today we're going to talkabout what actions you can take
to improve your homepage, somethings you can look at to
determine should you add somethings to your homepage of your
website, should you remove somethings that are currently on
(01:51):
your homepage of your website.
And my first tip for you is toget a fresh set of eyes on your
website.
Ask somebody to take a look atyour website on both desktop and
on their phone and ask them ifthey can tell what it is that
(02:14):
your clinic offers as soon asthey land on your website.
Are they able to get to keyelements, key pages to book an
appointment, to take the actionthat you truly want them to take
when they arrive on thathomepage?
Now, it can be a little trickybecause I think we all have this
(02:40):
vision of the content thatexists on our website, and I
know this to be a fact becauseday in and day out, we speak to
clinic owners and they're likewell, I know it's somewhere on
my website or well, it says itthere, but it's key information
that should probably be uphigher or more prevalent, but
(03:02):
it's kind of buried down deep.
We want to make sure that werealize that people that visit
your website have shortattention spans, and so we want
to provide them with keyelements that they need to make
sure that they have a good userexperience.
We also call user experience UX, which is short for user
(03:24):
experience.
It's an overlap when it comesto SEO and website design and
usability and all of thesethings, and so that is what
we're kind of diving into today,specifically as it relates to
your homepage.
So kind of talking, talkingyour way through the homepage.
(03:45):
When you first land on yourhomepage of your website or, for
that matter, any page of yourwebsite, your logo should be
easy to read and clear to see.
There has been this change overthe past couple years where
people have like to have like atranslucent header where their
(04:08):
logo is sitting on top of someaction behind it, whether it's a
video or maybe it's even just astill image.
But sometimes, when you putyour logo on top of that, it can
be really hard to read.
So we want to make sure.
Step one can somebody identifyyour logo?
(04:30):
Is it too big?
Is it too small?
If it includes a tagline, is iteasy to read?
Check, check and check.
Once we have solidified thefact that somebody can clearly
read your logo, then we want tomove on.
But before we do, if your logo,for example, that I just
(04:53):
recently mentioned.
If it's sitting on top of animage or on top of a video and
your logo is in color, does itmake more sense to have your
logo be a solid color and colordoesn't make more sense to have
your logo be a solid color?
We've seen just that simplechange make a website pop
because of the fact that thenyou can easily see the logo.
(05:13):
And while we're talking aboutcolors, we want to keep them
clear and concise and yet havesome of those call to actions,
the actions that we actuallywant somebody to take on the
website.
We want those sometimes to be adifferent color so that they
(05:33):
stand out.
So maybe if your color schemeis blues, then your call to
action is an orange or somethinglike that, just so it's clearly
a big pop.
This is where we click to bookan appointment as we continue
our way down the homepage.
Let's talk about the menu that'sat the top of the homepage.
In most cases, your menu isgoing to appear differently if
(05:56):
you're on a desktop version ofyour website, looking at your
clinic's website, versus amobile version, and you might
even need to adjust the menu ona mobile version, for instance,
if I am looking at the desktopversion of your website and you
(06:19):
have a number of drop-down menus.
So when you hover over specificelements of the top menu, you
might have drop downs right itmight be conditions and then it
drops down and it lists a bunchof conditions.
Well, it could be that that isdifficult to display on mobile.
(06:39):
So instead of having all of thedrop downs, you might just want
the top menu that goes to aconditions page.
From there you can click onothers and I'm speaking
specifically to mobile for thatelement not to just simplify the
menu on your desktop, becausewhen people aren't on desktop,
(07:01):
they're more likely to hoverover something to scroll down
more to take further action.
So you want to look at yourwebsite in both the mobile and
the desktop.
So, moving on down on yourhomepage, typically the next
segment that we see on ahomepage is the hero section,
(07:23):
whether this is a video or astagnant image or maybe images
on rotation.
We want to make sure that whensomebody sees the graphics that
are there, that they're able todirectly understand what it is
that you offer and the topsection of your website called
(07:45):
above the fold or before youhave to scroll down to reach
other sections.
We want it to clearly identifywhat you offer.
So that means even if in yourtagline, on your logo, it says
chiropractic care or sportschiropractor, cincinnati, or
(08:07):
anything like that, we actuallywant some of those key elements
in the written words that are onyour website.
And another thing that we wantto note is the location, which I
kind of already just alluded to.
But we want somebody to knowwhere you're located when they
get to your website.
We want somebody to know whereyou're located when they get to
(08:29):
your website and whether thatmeans that your address is in a
header bar above your logo or inthat hero section you say
proudly serving name of city, orhowever you want to display it.
We want to make sure thatsomebody knows exactly what it
is that you offer when they getto your website.
(08:51):
Sometimes, when people use someof the canned content that
companies put together, theirwebsites seem to not exactly
represent the services that theyoffer, but maybe just the
location.
We've seen this happen a lotwhere, specifically, we go to a
(09:11):
chiropractor's website and itmight be a picture of the city
where the office resides, whichis nice, but it looks more like
a tourism website than an actualchiropractic clinic.
So keep that in mind.
The images that you use,hopefully, are not stock photos.
(09:33):
They're photos that areactually taken at your location
and again tell the story aboutwhat it is that you offer.
We also want to make sure thatthat header section, that hero
section, isn't taking up toomuch space Because, again,
you're going to have to scrollor swipe if you're on a phone to
(09:54):
get down to the content belowit.
So you do usually have theability to make that section a
little shorter.
I mentioned before that a lot ofpeople use videos in that
section and that's actually kindof starting to be something
that's being phased out.
I think you're going to seemore of that phased out in 2024,
(10:16):
if I had my predictions, andyou're going to see more
stagnant images or even multipleimages all displayed at once.
If you are going to use a videoin that section, you do want to
make sure and really in general, when you have video on your
website, that it's pulling fromYouTube or that it's pulling
(10:39):
from a source that isn't justthe video loaded directly to
your website, because that canreally really slow things down.
We already talked about it, butI do want to mention it again
we want clear calls to action.
I've seen websites of clinicowners where there are two calls
(11:02):
to action or maybe it's not soclear.
Do you have a big orange buttonthat says buy supplements?
But you really want your truecall to action to be for
somebody to book an appointment.
If you want somebody to book anappointment, then we want that
to be the main call to actionand we don't want people to get
distracted with other calls toaction like to download a PDF or
(11:28):
again to purchase supplementsor to take any other actions
that aren't in alignment withwhat you really truly want them
to do when they're on yourwebsite.
If you take insurance if you area chiropractic clinic, for
example, and you take insuranceand that seems to be important
to people that are comingthrough your doors then we want
(11:51):
that again obvious on thehomepage that you accept most
insurances and then maybe add alink click here for a complete
list that goes to a differentpage.
You also want to make sure thatpeople from your homepage know
(12:15):
what services you offer and whatconditions you treat.
You can have different sectionson your homepage that highlight
each of those.
Are you asking people on thehomepage of your website to sign
up for a random newsletterwithout giving them any reason.
If so, most likely peoplearen't signing up.
So if you do want a secondarycall to action to start
(12:37):
collecting email addresses, Ithink that's great, but you want
to give them a reason to dothat, not just ask them to sign
up for your newsletter.
That's a little too general and, again, it's not a very strong
call to action that's going toget people to sign up.
A lot of people these days arestepping up and they're
(12:58):
including testimonials on theirhomepage, which I love and
absolutely think you should do,but personally I don't like the
automated widgets that pull themdirectly from Google.
I like to see core testimonialsthat really help showcase what
(13:19):
your company offers as actualtext on the homepage, instead of
the little auto-populated onesthat grab out random or the most
recent reviews from Google,where you don't have as much
control over what you'reshowcasing.
On this show we talk a lotabout SEO, and there are a
(13:44):
number of episodes that we'llleave in the show notes that
reference specific SEO elements,like making sure that your
website loads quickly this isabsolutely imperative for your
homepage Making sure that you'reusing H1 tags, h2 tags the
proper way.
(14:04):
Making sure that you're usingthe proper keywords on the
homepage of your website.
Again, that is going to be oneof the most frequent website
pages.
I am also a fan of moving yoursocial media links to the bottom
of the page instead of at thetop.
The reason for this is, ifsomebody lands on your homepage,
(14:28):
you want them to take an actionon your webpage.
You don't want them to getdistracted by clicking on your
Instagram link, going over toInstagram and not coming back to
your website.
So I do suggest that you movethose social media links down to
the bottom of your website.
If you do want to keep them atthe top, that's not a big deal,
(14:51):
but I would have them make surethat they open up in a new
window so that if somebody doesget distracted and start looking
around a social media site,that you still have your website
open in a different window forthem to come back to.
Also, we want to make sure, ifyou want somebody to call you to
(15:14):
book an appointment, you wantto make sure that the phone
number is clickable.
So many people, again, areusing mobile devices, so I
suggest that you have click tocall options where somebody can
easily click on the phone numberand it will call you the phone
number and it will call you.
As we talk about ease, we alsolike to see address, map and
(15:45):
hours.
If you want to showcase yourhours, I can understand why some
people might not want toshowcase their hours, but if you
do want to showcase your hoursof operation, your homepage is a
great place to do that.
But you definitely want toinclude a map and the physical
address, and the map should beclickable so that if somebody is
looking you up and on theirphone they can click through to
get directions.
If your location requires someadditional information on how to
(16:11):
get to it For example, if youlive in a big city and you want
to make sure that somebody knowswhat stop to get off on on the
subway, or if you have awkwardparking, or if you want to
showcase the fact that somebodyshould park in a specific
parking lot I like thatinformation included by the
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member and your address.
We want to make sure thatsomebody can find your location
with ease, so providing thatadditional information will make
it easier for them to get toyour physical location, which
will put them in a better moodwhen they check in and it will
help them to have a betterexperience with your business
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and hopefully that will lead tothem leaving a nice review
Towards the bottom of yourwebsite.
We call the bottom section yourfooter, and there you want to
make sure that throughout yourwebsite you include your
copyright information, links toterms of use and privacy policy
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and anything else that you needto provide information-wise.
That does not need to be at thetop of the page.
So we covered a lot today.
I'm just going to kind of goover some of it as a refresh.
We suggested that you get afresh pair of eyes on your
website to make sure thatsomebody understands exactly
(17:37):
what you offer.
We talked about adjusting yourmenu, if need be, so that you
have a different mobile menuversion than you do for your
desktop.
We talked about how to handlethe hero section of your website
making sure that it showcaseswho you are, what you offer and
who you offer it to, includingthe areas that you offer it.
(18:00):
We talked about if you offerinsurance.
You might want to mention thatand make that easy to understand
and for people to access thatinformation.
We want to make sure that allkey elements on your website are
easy to get to from yourhomepage.
We want to make sure that whenpeople are there, that they
(18:21):
understand what services youoffer, what you treat, what
conditions you treat.
We want to make sure that youinclude testimonials for social
proof when it comes to beingsocial.
We suggest that you have yoursocial media links down towards
the bottom of that page.
We want to make sure that yourhomepage loads quickly, that
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visitors have a good userexperience, that your phone
number is clickable so peoplecan click to call when they are
on their mobile device, that youhave a map that makes it easy
for people to find you and,again, that you follow all best
SEO practices, along withkeeping legal information and
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copyright information thoselinks down at the footer of your
website.
That's it for today.
We would love to hear from you.
Please visit us on Instagram atPropel, your Company.
Send us a direct message andlet us know what topics you
would like to hear about inupcoming episodes.
(19:27):
Thanks so much for your timetoday.