What your current and past patients have to say about you can speak volumes to potential patients. When it comes to recommending your medical practice to others, there is simply no better way to build trust among people who don’t know you yet than through word-of-mouth – which, these days, is often done over the internet.

In previous eras, word-of-mouth recommendations occurred naturally as people in the community would interact on a daily basis. Because the vast majority of these recommendations now occur online, it’s incredibly helpful when your medical practice website includes patient reviews or testimonials. It’s a critical component of online reputation management for your medical practice.

Why Patient Testimonials Matter

Most people go online when searching for a new doctor.

The opportunity to make a good first impression of your practice begins with your website. Does it contain helpful information? Is your site easy to navigate? Is it visually appealing, and does it represent what is unique about you and your practice? And perhaps most important of all: Is your medical practice website properly optimized so that it shows up at the top of Google search results?

Once you have a potential patient on your website, popular pages they tend to visit include the doctor bios, services or treatments you offer, and patient reviews.

In fact, the bulk of patients who are looking for a new doctor will read online reviews before making the decision to call your office for more information or to request an appointment. By including patient reviews or testimonials on your website, you can boost your conversion rate (how often you can turn a website visitor into a patient) by nearly 300%.

What Makes a Good Patient Testimonial?

For the greatest impact, patient reviews should be authentic, relatable, specific, and fresh. You’ll want to ensure that you or a member of your staff is asking existing patients – preferably before they leave your office – if they’d be willing to share feedback about their experience on your practice’s website. You can make it really easy for them to follow through by including a “leave a review” link on your medical practice website. After all, online reputation management for your medical practice means being proactive and gathering patient reviews onto your site.

In a patient testimonial, the following factors can weigh heavily in your favor with potential new patients:

• Your medical specialty or area of interest
• Your bedside manner or personality
• Office location and how convenient it is
• Front-office staff friendliness and attentiveness
• Your responsiveness to patient questions during the appointment
• Quality of your medical care
• Amount of time spent with each patient
• How accessible the healthcare providers are on your team
• Wait times

Online reputation management for your medical practice means encouraging patients to leave you positive reviews online, making their testimonials easily findable by prospective patients who are visiting your website, and responding to patients who leave reviews when appropriate.

Video Testimonials

Video testimonials in particular can be powerfully persuasive. Videos create hard-to-forget images that stick in a patient’s mind, with a face and a voice to deliver the firsthand experience of the excellent medical service you provide. Visuals can make for a more impactful patient testimonial than words alone.

iHealthSpot Interactive Web Design and Marketing Is Here for You

Do you want to generate positive online buzz about you and your medical practice? Would you like to make online reputation management for your medical practice a breeze?

The website design and digital marketing professionals here at iHealthSpot Interactive can help you harness the power of effective patient testimonials for your medical practice website. We can even create a spectacular website for you if you don’t yet have one. Call us at (877) 709-0999 today for a free quote, and let us help you attract new patients to your practice!