How to Choose Physical Therapy Website Developer

There are certain things that everyone is looking for in a physical therapy website developer. Some of these are pretty basic things.

• You want a functional website that’s going to generate more traffic for your business.
• You want your website to be a patient education tool.
• You want your website to help with operational efficiency.
• You want your website to communicate your expertise, etc., etc.

The tone of your website is generally considered to be important. Given that most of your traffic to your website will be prospects (potential patients), you want your website so be easy to navigate and to clearly represent the quality of service you provide.  What I often state is, “In a service business, people judge what they can’t see based on what they can see.”  Make sure your website is very attractive.

These are all important things to keep in mind when you’re looking for a physical therapy web developer. However, it’s also important to communicate exactly what you’re hoping to achieve. You’ll have to work hand-in-hand with them to get the types of results you want.

What Are You Trying to Achieve?

It’s always a good idea to be really clear about what you’re trying to achieve with your website. Do you want to attract new patients? This is often what many physical therapists want to do with their online presence. But for some, new patients may not matter that much. Instead, they may want to improve their online image. Maybe they want to become thought leaders in their field. For them, the quality of viewers attracted may be more important than the quantity. It’s important to convey your aims to your web developer so that you can see the types of results you want.

Design Secret: Look at a Lot of Websites but Only Spend 5 Seconds on Each PT Website

It’s a great idea to look at websites of companies within the physical therapy profession. Once you know what your competitors are going for, you can compete with them more easily. Forbes magazine agrees with this idea, adding, “Most designers are not experts in your field of business. Having a list of competitor websites and doing your own research about those competitors and similar businesses can help you articulate ideas for the new website.”  Here’s a tip though.  You could waste hours of time looking at other physical therapy websites.  Don’t!  Do a search for physical therapy in various cities.  Click on links the to each PT website but only look at it for 5 seconds.  You will know within that timeframe if you like the look and feel of the website or not.  If you do, write it down and communicate it to your developer.

What Does Your Web Developer Specialize In?

Before you start working with a web developer, you might want to check out their previous work and see what they specialize in. If you’re a physical therapist working with E-rehab, you don’t need to worry because we specialize in building websites for physical therapy private practices. You can feel free to point to our previous work and tell us what you liked and what you didn’t.

We bring a certain type of expertise to the task while you bring another. We’re experts in web development while you know the services you provide. It’s important for you to stay involved in the process, overseeing the content and design to make sure that it portrays your practice accurately. At E-Rehab, we’ll be happy to keep you as involved in the process as you’d like to be.

An article from Huffington Post also suggests that you should check out the “back-end” of websites your web developer has built.  This will give you an idea of what it will be like to later edit your website on your own. Is it going to be a simple, easy process or will it be too complicated for you?  We build our websites on the most popular website development platform on the web-WordPress.  This means it is easy to update your website on your own.  We even provide personalized training, videos, and phone and email support 5 days a week for you.

[note_box]Take home message: Your website should generate business, communicate your brand image and expertise, improve efficiency, and should be a patient education tool. It can also be a place where you sell product, appointment requests are taken, paperwork is filled out, where a video story about your practice is communicated, where outcomes are presented, and more. Take the time to invest in a good physical therapy website. It will certainly pay dividends on a daily basis.[/note_box]

Contact us for more great tips on working hand-in-hand with your physical therapy web developer.