Set A Baseline For Site Conversions
STOP! Don’t even consider tweaking your website for better conversions until you set a baseline starting point.
While attracting as many prequalified new patients to your dental website is important, converting those prospects, that is, giving them cause to call for an appointment is perhaps even more crucial.
There are several methods to improve conversions, yet before implementing any design tweaks, you’ll want to first set a baseline for a “before and after” comparison. This of course is needed to determine the effectiveness of your efforts.
How To Track Conversions
If you have not done so already, you’ll need to devise a system that accurately tracks the number of “website generated” patients acquired during a certain time period (per month is good).
Once this figure is known, or as close to it as possible, comparing the current acquisition numbers against the number of new patients acquired after your design tweak, will help reveal the percentage increase in patients and how successful you were.
Your front desk, accounting or other records can provide insight to the number of new patients attained from your website.
You can gather intelligence by several means:
- establish a dedicated phone line displayed only on the website
- provide an area on new patient forms that ask how they found you
- make it policy for the front desk to ask patients how they were referred
- create a unique email identity for the website’s appointment form
- place a website tracker on the site’s contact thank you page
Another way to measure “conversions” or calls, is to contract with a company that provides dedicated call lines. One of my personal favorites is the ifbyphone service — it has a “click to call” feature that enables people to call effortlessly from your website and it can track where the calls came from.
As with any advertising or promotional effort, without first establishing a baseline beginning and a way to track your progress, you’ll have little or no point of reference and you would waste both precious time and money.
