Healthcare Website Design: 5 Best Practices and Examples

In the digital age, the internet plays a role in nearly every industry, including healthcare. Most healthcare organizations recognize the importance of developing online platforms that serve their patients, residents, and healthcare providers. However, many facilities still need support crafting a healthcare website design that really showcases their commitment to delivering high quality care.

Why Prioritize Website Design for Healthcare?

There is a constant need for medical services in the U.S. So, as a healthcare provider, why focus on marketing elements like healthcare website design when you have more pressing issues to consider?

Frankly, the numbers speak for themselves. Approximately 7% of all Google searches — over 1 billion per day — are related to healthcare. In addition, studies have shown that the quality of a facility’s online services can impact a patient’s willingness to seek in-person care. As patients turn to the internet in increasing numbers to address their medical needs, healthcare facilities would certainly benefit from considering how to make the best medical website possible.

Essential Web Design Elements

When exploring healthcare website ideas, there are a number of elements to consider. Before we dive into best practices, it’s important to understand the essential elements you should include. Regardless of what healthcare sector your facility falls under, having these in mind can serve as a universal starting point to organizing a well-rounded website:

Best Practices for Designing a Healthcare Website

Now that we’ve covered essential web design elements, you may be wondering how to apply them in context to your healthcare facility. Below, we’ll talk through five of the best healthcare website design practices and examples to help you get started.

1. Make a Great First Impression on Healthcare Stakeholders

First impressions matter, especially when designing healthcare websites. For patients, providers, or healthcare partners, this is the first thing they’ll notice about your organization. If the website looks outdated or unprofessional, visitors may be suspicious of the information presented or the organization itself. A professional and attractive website gives the impression that your facility is committed to providing exceptional care. Consider the following ideas to ensure your website sets the right tone:

Employ consistent branding: Have a coherent design throughout the website, including colors, fonts, and visual aids to reinforce brand recognition and use messaging that reflects your mission and reinforces your value propositions. This will help make your facility more recognizable within the online healthcare sphere.

Share your wins: Be sure to highlight awards or accolades your providers or healthcare facility has received to boost your brand awareness and improve credibility, which you can present in well-crafted press releases.

Feature positive reviews: Studies show that third-party reviews positively impact brand trust, so consider emphasizing glowing reviews and testimonials from patients as part of your healthcare website design.

Example:

On its homepage, a care facility has a compelling hero section/image that connects to its brand’s color scheme and an engaging tagline that defines the organization’s goals. The page includes several testimonials sharing positive experiences at the facility, and visitors can click a link to read more reviews.

2. Consider Your Target Patient and Provider Population

The primary goal of a healthcare website design is to provide useful information; but, in order to know what qualifies as “useful,” you should be clear on the types of patients and providers your site is hoping to attract. Keep the following tips in mind when planning for your target audience:

Conduct user research: Through interviews and surveys, gather information about your patients or providers’ needs, preferences, and goals. This can be used to create audience personas — profiles that represent segments of your target audience.

Appeal to their values: Using this data, explain how your organization can address the audience’s pain points and why your services will meet their specific needs. Whether you’re looking to attract passionate healthcare staff or new patients, this is an opportunity to show how your mission promotes high quality care.

Speak to multiple audiences: Different parts of a website will focus on varying goals, such as supporting current patients, engaging new ones, or attracting healthcare professionals for employment. Be sure to tailor your website’s messaging accordingly to speak to each group’s unique needs.

Example:

A long-term care facility addresses the concerns of prospective residents and their families on a “Frequently Asked Questions” page. The website also features a “Careers” page that appeals to professionals seeking a career in healthcare and explains why their facility is a great place to work.

3. Include Informative Health Content

As a facility, demonstrating expertise and knowledge of the industry is one way to build trust between you and your patients. Your healthcare website design can not only be used to advertise your services, but also show the public that you’re on the forefront of evidence-based medical information.

Including helpful, relevant health content as part of your website design will enable you to participate in public health education while attracting more potential patients through online marketing. To integrate health content into your website, you can keep the following tips in mind:

Select relevant and helpful topics: When publishing informational health content, it’s important to ask yourself what healthcare topics are timely and useful to your patients or other health professionals who may be browsing your site.

Use appropriate modes of delivery: You can choose to relay health information in the form of blogs, videos, articles, or newsletter campaigns. Select modes that you believe will have the best reach on the types of patients or providers that you serve.

Utilize best SEO practices: Follow SEO practices to help your content get picked up and spread around by search engines. In addition to identifying frequently searched health topics/keywords, it can be valuable to publish content written by authoritative voices at your facility (e.g., doctors, nurses, researchers).

Example:

A home care agency creates a blog section on their navigation menu that takes users to well-written, educational content for families curious about what home care is. To make the content even more digestible, these blog posts each include high quality images and animated videos supplementing the topics.

4. Optimize User Experience

A thoughtful, easy-to-use healthcare website design can increase the likelihood that visitors will book appointments, use telehealth services, and request further information. On top of making care more accessible to patients, this can lead to increased conversions and revenue for your organization. The following ideas can help ensure your user experience is a good one:

Make navigation simple: Page menus should be organized logically, and labels should be easy to find, with categories that make sense to your intended audience.

Welcome mobile devices: More than 60% of internet traffic now comes from mobile devices. Websites should be optimized to be viewed and interacted with on a smaller screen, with an emphasis on a responsive layout. Cell phone use has even increased among older adults, so regardless of whether you’re running a nursing home or an outpatient clinic, website design that is mobile-friendly will help you attract more patients.

Prioritize page speed: Users are likely to leave a website that takes too long to load, so make sure to invest in page speed optimization to provide the best user experience.

Example:

A rehabilitation center’s home page includes a navigation menu at the top of the screen with easy-to-read labels leading to relevant resources. When users access the site from their mobile devices, the menu appears as a button in the top right corner.

5. Prompt Actions to Engage the Healthcare Community

A great healthcare website design should encourage visitors to spend more time on the site, explore its content, and potentially engage with the organization in a way that leads to in-person interactions. Prospective healthcare staff of the facility can also interact with the site to take steps toward employment. Use these tips to encourage forward momentum on your site:

Share a clear call to action: The best medical websites include prominent calls to action (CTAs), which can direct users to complete tasks like signing up for your patient portal, scheduling appointments, completing surveys, filling out contact forms, or applying for a job.

Simplify forms: If the website includes forms to fill out, they should be straightforward and easy to use to ensure they are actually completed and submitted.

Use personalization: Content for medical websites, along with CTAs, can be individualized based on a user’s browsing history, leading to increased conversions. It’s also important to tailor the reading level of health content for the intended audience. For instance, a medical blog geared towards physicians will have a much higher reading level than an online brochure for teens seeking a birth control appointment.

Example:

A clinical research center utilizes personalization to identify whether a user has previously expressed interest in a clinical trial. The website then displays a personalized CTA to encourage that individual to enroll in an upcoming trial and provides a simple form to express interest.

Want to Learn Even More Ways to Promote High-Level Care?

Now that you have a better understanding of how your healthcare website design can help you stand apart from the crowd, take your staffing game to the next level. Want to learn more? Get access to fresh insights and practical nurse staffing tips from IntelyCare today.

IntelyCare writer Danielle Roques, BSN, RN and IntelyCare editor Kayla Tyson, contributed to the writing and research for this article.