The moment a visitor arrives at your healthcare organization’s website, you’ve got her full attention—but you could lose it very quickly if you don’t provide what she’s looking for. Plus, she’s probably doing several other tasks while perusing your site. You don’t have much time, and you only get one first impression.
Unfortunately, when most healthcare organizations are revamping their websites, they focus on the homepage.
Instead, the focus should be on landing pages. Your homepage should only be a map to take the visitor to a strong landing page.
Here are the 5 reasons your healthcare website needs effective landing pages:
1. To Answer The Patients’ Questions
Press releases. Awards announcements. Letters from the CEO. These are just some of the ways that hospitals squander landing pages to talk about themselves instead of helping the patient.
When someone lands on your healthcare organization’s site from a Google search, she’s looking for something. She may be searching for information about her own condition, her child’s disease, or her spouse’s upcoming procedure.
The page where she lands should be all about the patient. Not your hospital. Your content should inform, instruct, and encourage your reader.
2. To Combat Sketchy Health Info
Clarifying bogus health info builds your hospital’s credibility. If you don’t do it, someone else will.
Approach your landing page as your way to fight all of the misinformation floating on the web. Each time your landing page answers the question effectively, that is one less time another page with sketchy information has a chance.
Alternatively, each time your landing page—for whatever reason—doesn’t do the job, you are decreasing the chances of that person ever returning to your site.
3. To Get Into The Details
Just as your homepage provides general information, an effective landing page gets specific. A patient is looking for in-depth information regarding their condition and how you can help them with it.
Unfortunately, many hospitals slap up health library content on their landing pages, instead of taking the time to explain a condition or procedure to the patient in their own words. That’s also a missed opportunity to highlight your healthcare organization’s unique approach.
Narrate through everything you would want to know if you were in your patient’s position. If you can’t put yourself in the patient’s position, interview one to get more insight.
Also read: 7 Steps To Test Your Healthcare Blog or Microsite
An effective landing page will leave your reader feeling empowered and informed enough to make the right choices.
4. To Get Engagement
While the reader may walk away feeling educated, you can bet that this reader will have more questions down the road. The design of your landing page has to direct them to your CTA—call to action.
Assuming your content is just what the reader was looking for, ask for something in return—like visiting a related blog post, signing up for your e-newsletter, or downloading your patient guide on the topic.
5. To Be Found In Search Engines
Search engines love landing pages. “Landing pages are kind of like cars—make sure they’re tuned-up properly, and you’ll likely get better performance and savings out of them down the road,” according to the Google Webmaster blog.
Search optimization means designing and coding your page so that people can find it through a Google search.
Remember that Google also wants people to continue using its search engine, so they need to be satisfied. Google designed its search algorithm with this in mind. Prominently featured sites will be those that have strong landing pages that provide what people are searching for.
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