Visible Optometry Research Articles

Even before seeing your website, visitors have a preconception of what it looks like. For example they expect it to be bright, clean, and professionally-written like other medical websites they’ve seen.

Every element of your site that does not meet their expectations—for example they expect to see blue and your site is red—elevates their anxiety because of dissonance with their preconceptions. If your site underperforms in enough areas it can hurt your image and make a negative first impression.

Are your visitors stressed about their vision problem? Are they concerned about cost? A good website design harmonizes with their emotions to reduce anxiety, and make patients comfortable enough to call or visit your office.

This article briefly examines the most common optometry website problems that we’ve seen. If you already have a website, we hope this list can help you to optimize it for better performance.

Design

Design Principles: A modern look is important, but don’t let the design dominate your content. Over-design examples include too many images, unconnected blocks of text which disrupt the eye-path, distracting colours, and even tacky “3D” menu buttons.

Colour: Colours have a subtle but definite emotional influence on visitors. If you want visitors to feel calm, relaxed, and safe, consider cool pastel colours. It’s no surprise that eight of the top ten medical websites have light-blue colour schemes. Certainly avoid colours that are depressing or aggravating.

Site Navigation: The site menu should be very simple and clear. The best placement is along the top, or sometimes in a sidebar.

Fonts: To assist low-vision patients, the text size should be slightly larger than usual and should contrast well against the background.

Multimedia

Images: Photos are fantastic for adding visual interest and setting the site’s mood. There are many guidelines for choosing appropriate photos, but most importantly make sure they look professional.

Sound and Music: Optometry sites do not need sound tracks. If an element does need sound (such as a video), it should never play automatically. Consider people who may be browsing your site while at work.

Animations: Animations only distract from your important content, and can be an annoyance on mobile browsers (cell phones) and with slow Internet connections.

Splash Page: A page that loads before the homepage is known as a splash page. They often have large images or animations, and require the user to “click here” to enter the site. While acceptable on entertainment websites, on medical sites they present an accessibility barrier and can damage your website’s search engine ranking.

Site Copy (Written Content)

Tone: The tone should be professional but friendly.

Language: Some websites read like a medical textbook. Consider using commonly-understood terminology, and adding definitions where appropriate. Avoid slang and always double-check for spelling and grammar.

Keywords: Keep your important keywords in mind while crafting your copy. Neglecting this will impair your search engine ranking. See Point 4 of this article for more information on keywords.

Note: Writing quality site content is challenging, so don’t be discouraged if you have trouble doing it yourself. Professional copywriters are often employed for commercial website development.

If you have any questions about optometry website design, please leave a comment below or contact us directly!

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Creating a website for your practice can be a daunting task, so we’ve assembled this list to help guide you through it.

If you’re working with a web designer who is unfamiliar with optometric websites, you should review the following design steps so you can make better-informed decisions. Mistakes made in planning can be difficult to correct later on.

1. Choose a Designer and Host

Web designers can be found in every city from Nanaimo to Charlottetown, and some will produce a basic site for as little as $1000. It’s important to find one who will take the time to learn about your business, how visitors find optometrist websites, and what website features are professional and appropriate.

Most designers will also host your site, meaning they keep the necessary files running on their computer (web server) for a monthly fee. You get what you pay for with hosting, and a lower fee usually translates to less technical support and assistance with maintaining your website.

2. Choose a Domain Name

The domain name is what people type to access your site, for example www.myoptometryclinic.ca. We could write several articles on this topic alone, but the important tips are:

• Choose carefully: you can’t easily change your domain name later.
• Most domains are already taken, so brainstorm several options.
• It’s preferable for Canadian Optometrists to use a .ca extension. Make sure the .com extension of the same domain isn’t already being used for something embarrassing should your patients visit it by mistake. If possible, register both the .ca and .com domains.
• Pick something easy to remember and easy to spell.
• Try to include either your name, your business name, or your city name. This will help it rank better in search engine results.
• Use only letters. Avoid using hyphens and numbers.
• Keep it short. No more than 20 letters.
• Registering a domain name costs no more than $20 per year. Most designers will charge more for helping you choose one and registering it.
• The domain name must be renewed periodically. This should be done by your host.

3. Plan Your Email

It’s important to have a flexible and reliable email system. Telephone is still the preferred method of contacting optometrists, but email continues to gain favour. A recent Visible Optometry survey found that Canadians prefer the following methods when contacting an Optometrist for general information:

• Telephone: 47.9% (percentage that prefer the telephone)
• A contact form on the Optometrist’s website: 23.3% *
• Visit in person: 17.8%
• Email: 11.0%

* Note that a contact form still requires the optometrist to use email to receive and respond to the message.

The domain name you choose will be part of your email address, and you can have as many addresses as you need: for example info@myoptometryclinic.ca and appointments@myoptometryclinic.ca.

4. Define Your Purpose

When preparing a presentation, it’s important to know exactly who your audience is. Your website is an important presentation so think carefully about who you expect to visit it. Will you have many online resources for current patients? Do you primarily want to attract new patients? Your answer will guide the rest of the design process.

5. Research Your Keywords

This is important if you intend to attract new patients using your website. The idea is simple: people search for optometrists online by typing keywords in a search engine, such as Google. The closer the match between those keywords and the text on your site, the higher your site will appear in the search results.

It’s difficult to properly write your website content if you don’t know what keywords and keyphrases people are using to search. Keyword research typically involves using online statistical tools and surveying people in your market. Often times the results are unexpected, for example our surveys have revealed:

• Only 19% of Canadians include the word “optometrist” when searching for optometrists.
• Only 67% of those spelled “optometrist” correctly.
• At least 10% of Canadians are confused between optometrists, ophthalmologists, and opticians.

Quality Keyword research can cost several thousand dollars, which is why small businesses typically don’t request it. If you are writing your own content without it, simply incorporate keywords and keyphrases that you believe are important.

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