Website Design Focus: Healthcare
Posted on 16th March 2025
In the third instalment of our blog series exploring different business types, we’re focusing on websites for the healthcare sector. This includes businesses and organisations involved in medical and related fields such as dentistry, eyecare, skincare, hearing care, physiotherapy, footcare, weight loss treatments, and more.
Websites for these types of organisations have specific requirements and best practices that are essential for attracting and retaining your target patient groups. We've outlined some of the key considerations below.
1. Make Your Website 100% Accessible
This is especially important for medical and healthcare websites, particularly those used by people with disabilities. A great starting point is the international Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, which offer a comprehensive set of recommendations to help make your site accessible.
The WCAG includes a lot of information, but the key principles are to ensure your site is easy to navigate and understand, and compatible with assistive technologies such as screen readers for visually impaired users. It’s also important to publish an Accessibility Statement that aligns with any guidelines relevant to your practice.
Additionally, we recommend conducting user experience (UX) testing with a group of current patients. Their feedback can provide valuable insights into how accessible and user-friendly your website truly is.
2. Keep Your Patients Firmly in Mind
It goes without saying, but your website should take a patient-focused approach. This means offering clear, up-to-date information presented in a user-friendly layout, with legible fonts and plenty of white space to ensure a clean, easy-on-the-eye experience.
As with any modern website, it’s essential that your site is fully mobile responsive, displaying correctly on all types of smartphones, tablets, desktops, and laptops. Make it easy for patients to book appointments or schedule calls by integrating an online booking or calendar system. Be sure to include all relevant contact details and social media links in both the header and footer of each page.
A valuable addition to your site is a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) page, where you can compile the most common queries patients tend to have. If you're a new practice and unsure what to include, research competitor websites for inspiration (without copying!) or use tools like Answerthepublic.com to discover what people are actively searching for online.
Answerthepublic.com – some of the search results for ‘Footcare’ (these can be downloaded into Excel).
3. Boost Your Credibility with the E-E-A-T Framework
Google’s mantra of Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust—commonly known as E-E-A-T—is an excellent guideline to follow when building medical and healthcare websites. Showcasing your expertise is essential, so be sure to include your professional credentials, qualifications, and memberships, as well as highlight your background and experience on an 'About' page. This is a strong foundation, but to truly build trust with potential patients, you’ll need to go a step further.
As mentioned earlier, clear communication is crucial across your website—especially when explaining your treatments and the results patients can expect. ‘Before and after’ images can be particularly effective for visual treatments like dentistry, skincare, and weight loss.
For services where visual results may be less evident—such as hearing care or physiotherapy—written testimonials and case studies work well. Incorporating third-party reviews from platforms like Trustpilot, Doctify, or the NHS website (where applicable) can also be incredibly valuable, as prospective patients tend to trust what others say about your services more than what you say yourself.
4. Add Authenticity and a Genuine Personal Touch
In healthcare, patients often choose the practitioner just as much as the service itself. So, in addition to building your E-E-A-T, it’s important to give prospective patients a genuine sense of who you and your team are. Use real photography of your staff and premises—including treatment rooms—and steer clear of stock imagery wherever possible.
Be sure to include a 'Meet the Team' page with up-to-date photos and bios for each team member. Consider adding video interviews with staff, along with a 360° tour of your clinic and treatment areas to give visitors a better feel for your environment. Patient interviews can also be a powerful addition—if you can find patients willing to participate, consider offering an incentive such as a free or discounted treatment.
5. Keep Security Front of Mind
If you plan to collect patient data through your website—whether via a patient portal, online contact form, or appointment booking system—it's essential to prioritise security. All it’seeze Nottingham websites come with an SSL certificate as standard, ensuring that any information entered on the site is securely encrypted.
Depending on the type of practice you run, additional measures may be necessary to safeguard patient confidentiality. If you're unsure of your obligations, it's best to consult your governing body or seek legal advice from a specialist in your sector. Whatever steps are required, be sure to include a clear and comprehensive Privacy Notice on your website, explaining how you protect patient data.
As with any business, you must comply with the Data Protection Act 2018, which enforces the UK’s version of GDPR following Brexit. This includes registering with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and paying the required data protection fee. You may also be subject to other obligations—so it’s important to stay informed and fully compliant.
6. Optimise Your Website for Local Trade
For most healthcare professionals, patients come from the local area—so it's essential to optimise your website and off-page content, such as social media profiles, with relevant geographical keywords to help people find you. These keywords can be tricky to incorporate naturally into your main website copy, especially if you serve a broad area, so make full use of your meta data to include towns, cities, counties, and regions where appropriate.
Be sure to claim and fully populate your Google Business Profile if you haven’t already. Add as much detail as possible, and also list your business on reputable local and national directories. Consistency is key—ensure your NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) is formatted the same way across every third-party site to support your local SEO efforts.
There are lots of other things you can do to enhance your local online presence, which is where it’seeze Nottingham can help with our Search Engine Optimisation services – just ask us for details.
All Sound a Bit Daunting? It’seeze Nottingham are Here to Help!
It’s hard enough running a busy healthcare practice without worrying about designing and optimising a website on top. Let it’seeze Nottingham take the strain – we’ll design a unique, user-focused website that meets all your needs and attracts the right patients for your practice.
If you choose us, you’ll benefit from local support as well as full training on our user-friendly Website Editor, which makes it quick and easy to update your site and add new pages. So, have a look at our range of website design packages to see which one might be right for you, then get in touch for a chat to discuss your requirements.
We can also audit your existing website for FREE if you’d like to hear our suggestions for improvement.
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