If you have a Web site for your practice or are thinking about getting one, there are a number of things that you need to think about so that your Web site is a success. I define a successful physical therapy Web site as one that helps you grow your practice.

I have worked in the Internet industry for more than a dozen years, with the last few years dedicated to building Web sites only for PTs. My company, E-rehab, Carlsbad, Calif, offers Web site, newsletter, search engine marketing, and customer-satisfaction survey services exclusively to private-practice physical therapy practices. In the course of building our business, the biggest lesson I have learned is that a Web site for a physical therapy practice is not like a Web site for most other businesses, and it certainly is not like a Web site that is trying to convert a sale online.

This article will tell you the secrets of what these fundamental differences are and give you a guide to how you should think about your practice's Web site. This article will not answer the questions of, "How do I get a Web site?" or "How much should I pay for a Web site?", but will focus on making sure that you get the most out of building and maintaining a Web site.

Content is King, Relatively Speaking

On the Internet, "content is king." However, a king is more regal in his royal robes, wearing his crown. Your Web site can successfully outline what services you offer, why you are a better choice than your local competition, and how they can contact you. But if it is served from a Web site that is unappealing or hard to navigate, you are at a disadvantage.

The design of your site is the single most important aspect of your Internet presence, because before a prospective patient reads a word of content, they will have formed an impression of your practice from the site design. You should consider if the design reflects the image that you want for your practice: friendly, sporty, modern, small town, flashy, etc. It is obvious that this first impression is very important.

A number of factors influence this first impression. Your design must immediately give an impression of quality and embrace standard Web site construction conventions. You probably are asking, "What does this mean?" Almost all physical therapy Web sites need to integrate the existing logo for the practice. So, for your Web site to have a high level of quality, the site must do this as well as possible. Colors used in the site must tie to the colors in the logo and convey the image that you are trying to establish for your practice. The fonts used in the design should match or complement the logo. The layout of the Web site should not try to be unique or even uncommon, but follow some of the basic rules of Web site construction—navigation links should be at the top or down the left side, your clinic information should be readily available on all pages, and the site should look consistent from one page to the next.

A physical therapy Web site is not Google, Wikipedia, Amazon, or Yahoo!; you will never have the same depth of content or business goals as these sites, so you do not need the same information-intense layouts that they use. Your site needs to focus on one subject per page and deliver that message clearly, succinctly, and in a visually pleasing manner— photos, slide shows, bulleted lists, and short paragraphs will accomplish this effectively and efficiently.

In my opinion, a Web site is the phone number of the 21st century. Many people would rather go to a Web site over giving you a call. When phone service first became available, not every business had one; but it did not take long for these businesses to catch on to the fact that they were losing business by not having one.

We have all called a business to find out when it is open or where it is located. Many businesses will answer these calls with an automated system that provides this information. Web sites now handle this function better. A big goal for your site is to answer the easy questions that visitors have: location, hours, phone number, etc.

A Focused Approach

The biggest fundamental difference between a physical therapy Web site and most Web sites is how it will be used and its ultimate goal. Your site is not there to get lots of visitors, but to get those visitors to become patients or improve your relationship with existing patients. If that means that a visitor only comes to your Web site once and never returns, but becomes a patient or refers someone or comes back for more treatment in the future for a different condition, your site has been successful. It actually is fairly unlikely that your Web site will be visited on a regular basis by the same person, so you do not need to be overly concerned with always adding new content or features to impress repeat visitors. You do not, however, want to have incorrect information or outdated information.

Your site's focus is to get patients to call your practice and set up an appointment. It is important in your site design to focus on making this as easy as possible for the patient. Including your address and phone number on every page is a great idea. If some visitors look for a Contact Us page to find your number and others look for a Location or map page, do not make an either/or choice; include your number on both pages so visitors find what they are looking for.

Ensuring Visitor Buy-in

From the paragraphs above, it should be clear that a good physical therapy site focuses on the top target audience: a prospective patient who is deciding if they should choose your practice. An old sales mantra comes to mind: "People do not want to be sold, they want to buy." Your site should not try to sell them on your clinic, but make it easier for them to choose you.

Do not waste visitors' time. Your Web site must try and communicate with its visitors as quickly as possible and in a manner that is both easy and enjoyable for the visitor. Your message should include references to both your efficiency in taking care of patients' needs and addressing concerns. If your Web site can help save the visitor time in making a decision, you will be ahead of the competition. Printable intake forms on our customers' Web sites has been a big hit, because it saves the patient time and is convenient.

The average prospective patient does not know why one PT is better than another, so your site needs to help address this. Some prospects will want to read what other patients have said about why you are better, others will want to know what your credentials are, and others will look for what you offer that your competition does not. You must address all these concerns and many more in the same clear, easy, appealing manner as above.

For many prospective patients, money is the biggest concern. Your Web site needs to address this concern by outlining what your insurance, medicare, and Medicaid coverage is.

A prospective patient may visit more than one Web site to decide which practice to visit. You need to make it clear to these visitors what is unique about your practice or at the very least what your strengths are. This can be anything from the size of your practice, your clinic setting, your specialty services and equipment, or where you are located. Remember that you are competing against other physical therapy Web sites.

Although the primary goal of your Web site is to address the concerns of prospective patients, you must not ignore another important audience: the current patients that you want to keep. You will get patients that go to your site only after they have come in. For these patients, you need to offer additional information—specific medical information, links to other resources on the Internet, and a monthly newsletter can all help in this area. Turning a happy patient into an ambassador for your practice is a great opportunity that should not be wasted.

Targeting Your Optimal Audience

Think about the demographics of your visitors. There is a huge difference between a physical therapy practice that focuses on athletes and one that focuses on general orthopedic therapy. Your Web site must address this difference. This returns us to the importance of the design. If you target the aging population of America, you should offer a site that uses slightly bigger fonts, has a very easy-to-read format and a comfortable look, and focuses on who you are so that you can start or build a relationship from the site. For athletes you need to mention their activity of choice (baseball, football, running, cycling, etc), use sports photos, brighter colors, eye-catching layouts, and an overall higher energy level.

If your clinic has a distinct focus, then you should embrace this with your Web site. A pediatric therapy practice should have a kid-friendly Web site so that parents can show their child where they will be taking them. If you focus on aquatics, make sure your site does also. Specialty programs, such as women's health, can be very important, and using one of these as a focus of your Web site can make a lot of sense.

To every rule there are exceptions, and your Web site is no different. If you want to address the growing population of information junkies who want deeper content on medical topics or even your practice, then do so. However, you should not lead with this but make it an area that they can get to with only slightly more effort. You want to start with brevity and quick information delivery. Getting to the deeper information might require a link to a page with more in-depth information.

You might be supplementing your income by selling products at your practice, and your Web site can help with this, but your Web site should not be a commerce site. You can list products you offer and even prices, but try to get the buyer to call your office to get these products or even come in to buy. This way you can foster a relationship that could lead to additional services or product purchases. Do not dilute the value of getting them to call your practice by selling directly from your site.

Focus on Marketing

Overall, the focus above has been on patients and prospective patients who are visiting your site. However, there are two important audiences that you can also address: prospective employees and local physicians.

Your Web site can be a great tool for recruiting candidates for employment at your practice. Once again, the initial impression that your site makes will be very important. Prospective employees will have very similar criteria for measuring your practice as patients. They will most likely be able to see the value that your site offers to patients and appreciate this. There is also a high likelihood that these candidates will be younger and more Internet savvy, so the quality of your Web site will be more important, along with the fact that you just have one.

Using your Web site to market to physicians is an area that many of our customers seem to overlook. This, however, is a waste of a great opportunity. A quality Web site will once again allow you to make that great first impression or improve their perception of your practice, and give physicians a way to find out more about what makes your practice special and influence their choice to refer patients to you. This can really help if you are not comfortable talking to these physicians, because your Web site will do it for you. All you need to do is help in directing them to it. This works especially well if you visit them in person and bring up the Web site on a computer at their office.

This brings us to one of the most important aspects in making your site a success: how to use it. As I mentioned previously, a Web site is a lot like a phone number and, as such, you should include your Web site address anywhere that you include your phone number: yellow pages ads, business cards, advertising, the sign on your door, etc—this list is nearly endless. A Web site works for you 24/7; your phone number most likely does not.

Using your Web site on all of your marketing materials will multiply the effectiveness of these efforts. A one-page flyer that includes your Web site will now give the reader a way to get multiple pages of information. A small yellow pages ad with a link to your Web site does the same thing. The Web site can make all these efforts better with almost no additional work. Granted, some people will not visit the site to find out more, but at least some will, and there is no reason not to include the Web site address.

Even as effective as using your Web site address on all your marketing effort is, you still will not be able to get it in front of all the prospective patients who are out there. To address this need, you must consider search engine optimization (SEO). You need to address getting your practice to show up where you want on popular search engines, such as Google, Yahoo!, Live, etc. There are many strategies and services to meet this need.

SEO is getting your site to list near the top when some one types in a certain combination of keywords. Advertising on the search engines provides small ads that display at the top or sides of the results pages on search engines. Advertising allows you to use keywords that SEO would not be able to address. The biggest plus to advertising on the search engines is that you pay only if someone clicks on an ad and goes to your site. Local search deals with the limited set of results that show up on the search pages, but it also includes the local and mapping services that the search engine companies offer. There are dozens of strategies available and a lot of underlying techniques that are used to execute these strategies. Unfortunately, the details of these are outside the scoop of this article.

In conclusion, I would like to summarize some of the secrets to a successful physical therapy practice Web site. Make it look great, build it to achieve your business goals, think about the way it is going to be used and who is going to use it, use your Web site to help your other marketing efforts, and make sure that it can be found on the Internet. There are many reasons to have a Web site, and the cost-to-value ratio is outstanding, so it is hard to justify not having one. You must, however, remember that your Web site may be the way that you are making a first impression with a prospective patient, so you really want to do it right.

John B. Mason has worked with computers for more than 20 years, and has been on the management teams of multiple Internet technology companies. Mason built the system that drives the E-rehab service offering and is responsible for all day-to-day management and operations. For more information, contact .