Medical Web Development: Design Essentials, Features, & Processes
Did you know that 80% of internet users have searched for health-related topics online?
The internet is where many important topics are investigated, and health is one of them. A healthcare website is the face of your medical practice, which can either help grow your business or cause it to lag behind competitors.
This article will guide you through the main steps of developing a medical website, explain why it is important to your business, and give insight into the best practices of the design of medical projects.
Reasons to Invest in Developing a Medical Website
The insight by Statista shows that medical websites are in second place among the most popular resources for finding information about a healthcare condition.
Here are the main benefits that web development in the medical sphere can give you:
- Brand-first impression about the company
- Competitive advantage
- Stay in touch with patients
- Increase customer base
- Use of marketing strategies
There are a lot of benefits in building a medical website. One of the best options to make a website is to entrust this job to a highly professional web development company that will do everything for you.
Design Essentials in Medical Sphere
In the sphere of medical services, simplicity should be considered the best medical design practice. The clean and fresh design of healthcare websites makes them appealing to customers and ensures a smooth user experience. Stick to this rule and your clients will not have problems with navigating your medical website.
The following practices should be taken into account if you want to have a nice, user-friendly website. We have also provided some of the top medical web designs for you to get a better picture of what we mean.
- Flat & laconic design
- User-centric design
- Appropriate color scheme
- Real-life photos & high-quality graphics
- Animations & interactive elements
11 Great Features for Medical Websites
Website development should concentrate on the ease of use and offer customers a simple way to interact with a web healthcare resource.
Let’s take a closer look at the main features that make for good web development, especially within the medical project domain.
- Intuitive search
- User-friendly website navigation
3. Value-giving content
4. Online appointment scheduling
5. Online payments
6. Useful downloadable resources
7. Staff directory
8. Social media integrations
9. Google Analytics integration
10. In-chat support and feedback form
11. 3D tour of a hospital
Developing Medical Websites: Vital Considerations
Aside from the features, medical websites should also put emphasis on the internal mechanisms that are not visible to users. Below you will find a quick overview of the main rules the best website development practices stand behind.
- Website responsiveness
After the Internet moved from PC to other devices, website responsiveness became more important than ever before. Any website should look equally as great on a big computer screen as on a tablet or smartphone.
- HIPAA compliance
Providers of medical services deal with protected health information (PHI) every day. PHI is all information related to health services, which is protected by HIPAA regulations. Information on health issues, symptoms, insurance, various patient forms, and financial credentials is all considered to be sensitive data.
- Quick load times
When it comes to loading times, medical websites should load in a flash. On average, users expect a website to load within 2 seconds at most. Any longer than that and you could lose potential customers.
- Simple & clear website navigation
If the information on your website that visitors are searching for is more than two clicks away, they will likely get frustrated. This can ruin their experience with your website and even make them turn to another service provider.
- Easy-to-digest & well-written information
Website visitors usually skim through copies instead of thoroughly reading the content. They expect the text to be presented in the form of short sentences. The use of bulleted and numbered lists, short paragraphs and sentences, and easy-to-read fonts helps to swiftly pull the necessary data out of the general information.
- The application of SEO practices
SEO optimization increases the likelihood that a website will appear at the top of SERP (search engine result pages) and consequently generate more traffic and potential clients to your medical web resource.
Medical Website: Summarizing Steps
Developing medical products requires a thorough understanding of this sphere. The best option is to turn to a professional software development team.
A software development company should provide you with the following services:
- Research target users, their needs, and possible expectations for the website
- Create functional specifications for the website
- Create an intuitive and appealing design based on the best practices
- Develop corresponding functionality
- Provide ongoing support and maintenance
You need to remember that the success of your website does not depend only on the professionalism of the web development team.
The process consists of different stages and strategies, and some of them are not directly connected with the technical implementation of the website no do they end with its release.
This requires knowledge of the latest trends and practices in the medical sphere and the field of web development. This is a summary of an article. Check out more details and recommendations for developing a medical website inside the complete article on the MLSDev blog.
