The way people find businesses is changing. More and more, the first impression with a potential client is through your website – and it can turn people off, or invite them into your business.
The days of relying on phone books for locating businesses are long gone. These days, if someone needs to find information, they are most likely turning to the internet to find it. And most of the time, they will use a search engine like Google or Yahoo to help guide them.
When someone in your community does an online search for hearing tests or hearing aids, you want to show up – and not just show up, but show up and look good.
The first impression a new potential customer has of your business is increasingly your website.
Consumer behaviour is changing rapidly. People no longer pick up the phone to find out information about a business.
If someone is looking for a hearing aid clinic in your area, and found you through a search or event through a link a friend gave them, it's your website that is their first point of contact.
So, it's important that first impression to be a good one.
Think of your website as your digital clinic.
Potential customers look at your website and form an opinion about your business and the quality of your services based on it. So, it should clearly be an online digital representation of the what they can expect when they come to your clinic.
So, what makes a quality website?
A quality website is clean, well-organized, easy to navigate, clear, modern (in terms of style and layout), functional, branded, and motivates the visitor to make contact with you.
Information such as hours of operation, location, and contact info should be extremely easy to find.
If you have social media profiles, buttons linked to these profiles should be present.
A quality website also looks good in all browsers – such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.
And it must be easy to view on a mobile device. More and more, people are using phones or tablets rather than desktop computers to access the internet. So, your website needs to be coded properly so it is 'responsive' and displays properly on mobile devices.
Finally, a good web-site is profesional. This means it has no spelling or grammatical errors, no old-style clip art, no blurry images, no loose ends. Your content is complete and visually appealing. Fonts match across the entire website and font color and size choices have been properly made.