Over the past 50 years, Deerfield Dermatology has gained the trust of generations of families and has become one of the most established dermatology practices within Chicago’s Northshore. Their exceptionally skilled providers have impressive credentials and are highly trained in medical, surgical and cosmetic procedures. Deerfield realized their website needed a major overhaul in order to bring it up to date and appropriately reflect the high quality nature of the practice and its providers. They also wanted to differentiate their practice from the competition in order to attract new patients. Deerfield reached out to myDermRecruiter to utilize our new web design services and bring their online presence up to date. Here is how we used our process to create a website for Deerfield that now works as a powerful marketing tool for their practice.
“We reviewed a lot of website designers when looking to upgrade our website. We ultimately went with myDermRecruiter due to their deep medical knowledge, strong design capability, responsive approach, and collaborative orientation. We enjoyed working with them and are very happy with the outcome. “
-The Deerfield Dermatology Team
Step 1: Defining Goals
The first step in creating a successful website is defining what success means to your practice. We took time to understand the purpose for Deerfield’s redesign, what action we ultimately wanted users to take upon visiting their site and determined what a successful outcome for the website would look like to them. Ultimately, Deerfield’s goals were to accurately represent the high quality of their practice, encourage visitors to book an appointment online and attract potential job candidates to their practice. They also wanted to make it easy for their patients to purchase cosmetic products online.
Step 2: Discovery
One of the most important steps in our process is gaining an accurate and detailed understanding of your brand, clients and competition. We spent a significant amount of time with Deerfield in the discovery phase. This was important to help us to know how best to accurately represent the brand both visually and through messaging. We wanted to understand their beliefs, motives, what they do best, what sets them apart from their competitors, and more. We also asked a lot of questions about their customers such as what they value, what their fears are, what questions they have, what their needs are and how the practice fulfills those needs. This helped us to identify which services, benefits, credentials, offerings, and characteristics to emphasize in the messaging and imagery in order to best appeal to their primary audience.
Step 3: Content Writing and Optimization
Creating content can be a real struggle for many businesses. It’s time consuming, many don’t know where to start or how best to present their information in a format that is ideal for the web. We can help with that.
Utilizing our initial research, we helped Deerfield to define and highlight their unique selling proposition. We also wanted to highlight “emotional benefits” in the content since this is what motivates users to take action. For example – Deerfield defined empathy and compassion as being something their clients highly valued. We dug a little deeper to find out why and learned “Dermatology is expensive, at times life-threatening, physiologically traumatic and doctors are in a very powerful position. In today’s society especially with a lot of stress within the medical profession, patients really appreciate a doctor who is very skillful but also sincerely empathetic. I have seen patients in tears after they have been treated by Dr. Singh-Behl as they are so grateful for skill and sincere caring.” This insight into their patients’ feelings and needs helped us to understand what was most important to their clients and how Deerfield’s providers fulfilled those needs. We also learned that their high level of expertise as well as their longstanding reputation was why they were sought out as a practice. We now knew what aspects of the practice to highlight in the website messaging in order to have the most impact.
Utilizing “social proof” in the form of customer reviews and testimonials is known to increase conversions rates on websites. Deerfield already had hundreds of great reviews which we dispersed throughout the site to add an extra level of credibility.
We also identified gaps in their content. For example, their previous site was very light on cosmetic content while their competitors had a lot of information, so we knew we needed to spend time creating content for this topic.
Step 4: Custom Design & Development
At myDermRecruiter, we create completely custom designed websites rather than simply trying to fit your information into the mold of a pre-built template. We build on WordPress, the most popular content management system in the world, because it is easy to use, learn and update. We always implement best practices in order for your website to be user friendly and easy to navigate. We understand that the majority of users are now visiting your website on their mobile device so we make sure your site is fully responsive and beautiful on any device.
Deerfield’s former site was very dated, hard to update, not responsive (they had a separate site for mobile users), and important information was buried and hard to find. With our understanding of the brand, their preferences, likes and dislikes, we created a design that was modern, clean and bright. We utilized their custom photography to help create a sense of authenticity. After we presented our initial design concepts, they reviewed them, gave us feed-back and then we proceeded to create detailed mock ups that they approved before we began building.
Previously, Deerfield’s large library of educational articles was disorganized and difficult to navigate – we reorganized this to make it easy to access. We also added before and after galleries of their procedures. Deerfield wanted users to be able to easily access these photos all in one place. Some other features we created include a blog for articles and promotions (which will prove to be essential for SEO and social media marketing) and an e-commerce store.
Step 5: Search Engine Optimization
When creating your website, we implement strategies to help your site rank well in search engines. We always employ technical SEO practices which include, among other things, ensuring fast page load times, making sure the site is fully responsive, creating an XML sitemap, installing an SSL certificate, following coding best practices, etc.
When it comes to search engine optimization in 2019, content is key. Modern SEO involves writing content optimized for “search intent”. We can do the research to incorporate popular phrases and questions that users are searching for answers to in your content.
Additionally, we’ll set up analytics so you can keep track of how well your site is performing.
Step 6: Training
Before we hand over the keys to your new website, we’ll provide training on how to maintain and update your site. We provided Deerfield Dermatology with a series of videos on how to use aspects of their site, update products, create blog posts, etc. so they could easily refer back to them in the future.
Step 7: Ongoing Maintenance
It’s important to keep your WordPress website up to date and regularly maintained to prevent hack attacks, spam, browser and mobile performance issues and update failures. We can also take website content updates off your plate. Here’s what we provide in our monthly maintenance package:
- Monthly WordPress Core Updates
- Monthly WordPress Plugin Updates
- Monthly WordPress Theme Updates
- Monthly Google Analytics reports
- Security monitoring
- Database Cleanup
- Updates and Optimization Requests
In Conclusion
Your website is an essential tool for finding, educating and communicating with your clients. It’s one of the most important marketing investments you’ll make for your practice. Interested in finding out how myDermRecruiter can enhance your online presence? Learn more about our website design services!