Building a Medical Website

There are specific challenges to face when building a medical website. You want the website to look professional, but it also needs to look friendly and approachable.

However, you don’t want to look so professional that your patients feel uncomfortable and ill-at-ease. The interface should be impressive, but not forbidding.

Some good quality photography is also beneficial, especially with relevance to the work of your medical business. If staff members, whether professional or official, appear on the website, they should look professional, yet approachable.

Medicine – a Respected Profession

It almost goes without saying that medicine is a highly respected profession. Therefore, a medical website must be completely ethical and comply with the laws operating in its location. If the practitioner or the business is a member of any professional associations (such as the British Medical Association), it’s a good idea to display the logo of the association.

Although the logo should be displayed where it can be seen, such as, on the home page, it should be discreet. It will give reassurance to the client/patient that they’re in good hands, that of a practitioner/medical company with professional recognition. It doesn’t need to be prominent on the page, however.

Keeping it Ethical

British law requires that business websites should disclose the location of the business and show the contact details both offline and online. The VAT number should also be displayed, even if the business doesn’t engage in online transactions.

As medical professionals hold high status in society, it’s doubly important that medical websites should obey these laws. The website must, naturally, give correct information that complies with current legislation. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was adopted by the then EU member countries in 2016.

This law was enacted to give website users more control over their data, and it’s essential that medical websites are GDPR compliant. Users need to choose to opt into subscribing to newsletters, and the site must undertake not to share the user’s contact details. In fact, user data protection is particularly important in the case of medical websites. Discretion regarding patient information is extremely important.

User Experience

As mentioned, a medical website or online pharmacy should look professional. Yet it must be welcoming and easy for users to navigate. The information architecture should be displayed in such a way that the users should find what they’re looking for with minimum trouble.

We should bear in mind that many patients are elderly. Users may be from a time when the Internet was yet to be created. Therefore, it’s particularly important that the website should be easy to get around. The required information should be completely accessible from the landing page.

There should be clearly labeled tabs on the home page to take the user to whatever page they need to visit. Information for patients or would-be clients should be easy to find within seconds of reaching the landing page.

Check out the Medical Website Design Experts

As we’ve seen, building a medical website isn’t quite like building a website for any other type of business. There are professional and ethical concerns to keep in mind, as well as legal issues. There are also particular considerations regarding users of medical websites.

Keeping these points in view, it’s becoming increasingly clear that designing such a website shouldn’t necessarily be entrusted to designers who are experts in the creating of websites in general.

To ensure that your site complies with current legislation and that its design and look is appropriate, it’s best to consult those who are experts in the creation and design of medical websites. This will ensure that your medical website will represent your practice correctly and serve your client/patients most appropriately.