This is entirely true.
You may be wondering whether you need to update your veterinary hospital website.
Veterinary consumers expect their veterinarian’s website to be up to date and reflective of the type of medicine they want to purchase for their pet. For a consumer looking for a new veterinarian, they want the veterinarian to be credible, so the website must be credible, too. When a visitor encounters an old, outdated veterinary website with old staff photos and impossible to find contact information, they will certainly keep looking for the type of veterinarian who keeps their practice (and their website) up to date. This study should convince you: according to the Stanford Web Credibility Research studies, over 75 percent of website visitors judge the veracity of a company based on its site design alone.
Here are 5 ways to tell if you need to upgrade the credibility of your veterinary hospital website:
- It fails the “Google Mobile” test. If your website isn’t mobile friendly, Google will penalize your mobile search engine rankings. It is wise to check your website’s status here: Google’s Mobile-Friendly test site.
- Your website is not “responsive” and you still have a separate mobile website. Current best practice is for your website to appear the same on any device. If you have just updated your website and it is not responsive, get your provider to make it responsive. If you are not sure what a responsive website is, give us a call.
- Your website design looks old. Remember the Stanford Study above? Here’s another one: according to the Keynote User Survey, 94 percent of people cited web design as the reason they mistrusted or rejected a website. If your site looks old or outdated, how do you think potential clients will know you just purchased the latest digital x-ray machine to provide the best, highest quality x-rays you can use to diagnose a pet?
- You haven’t updated any of the content on your website within the last year (photos, text, news) and it has not had an overall update in over 2 years. Technology is changing at a rapid rate, and without a website change in over 2 years, you are not offering a good website experience to your visitors. Believe it or not, this matters to visitors and the search engines. What also matters is an active online presence on the web. We understand it is enticing to think that you or your staff can manage updates for your website, but remember that staff changes and your ability to manage the website along with everything else you are managing within the veterinary hospital will falter over time. Find a good website provider that can assist you with updates.
- Your website is not on the first page of a Google Search. If potential clients cannot easily find you listed with the first few search engine results, you’re not going to be found.
If you discovered any issues with your website as a result of this blog post, give us a call. We will be happy to discuss the ways in which we can help you update your website in 2020 so that your website reflects the high quality veterinary medicine you practice.