Attracting a New Generation of Quality Patients
Tuesday, July 17, 2012 at 11:13PM 
Nona Djavid, DC
Private Practice Newport Beach, CA
MyChiroPractice, Inc.
CBP Certified Practitioner
Dr. Nona Djavid operates a private practice in Newport Beach, CA. A graduate of University of California at Berkeley in the field of Molecular and Cellular Biology with an emphasis in Neurology, Dr. Djavid earned her Doctorate of Chiropractic Degree from Life Chiropractic College West. She also earned post Doctorate certifications in Neurology and Chiropractic Biophysics. Dr. Djavid is the founder of WOW – Women of Wellness group – an organization that empowers female health care professionals to build healthy caring relationships through education and integrated health and wellness services.
INTRODUCTION
Years ago personal referrals and yellow page ads helped market and build businesses from the ground up. Small towns were littered with mom and pop shops, and business owners spent lazy afternoons walking up and down Main Street drumming up business with just a simple handshake and business cards.
Fast forward to today’s rapidly changing business landscape, and a new generation of technologically, web, and brand savvy patients who rely heavily on their FaceBook® friends for referrals, check the reputation of a health care provider on Yelp®, or Google® their way through dozens of listing for chiropractors, instantly trusting or discrediting them based on how each of their websites, logos, online reviews, or social media pages look like.
Right or wrong, image and social media standing is taking the front seat to credibility, reputation, or experience.
To stay competitive and visible, chiropractors have to start stepping outside the box, and give their future patients an image and presence that will make a statement. The first step would be to leave behind their homemade / cookie cutter logos and websites, and being open to change. Don’t get me wrong, I strongly believe one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but this new generation doesn’t even have time to crack open the book; an iPad® maybe.
How Do Quality Patients Choose a Chiropractor?
It’s very simple; aside from referrals, potential new patients let their subconscious decide. To understand this concept, you must put yourself in the shoes of a potential patient, and see the world through their eyes.
Let’s pretend you are looking to find a new dentist, because the referral from your wife happened to be on vacation. So you take to Google, and a minute later you are presented with a list of 20 dentists near your home.
As you click through to each dentist’s listings, you make certain conscious observations about them. You notice how fast or slow their website loads, how gimmicky or professional their web pages read, how attractive, old, or experienced the staff looks, or how depressing or modern their office feels. You may take a moment to read a couple of lines of text, but if the information is hard to find or decipher, you quickly click the back button.
For most people today, visual elements take precedence over the content of the website. The grumpy looking dentist with the outdated website could be the best oral surgeon in town, but chances are you passed him up because his website didn’t give you the impression of value, trust, or reliability. Instead you will remember the clean powder blue website with the round yellow logo in the corner – and in your opinion whoever this website belongs to, is the front runner in your search for a dentist. That’s your subconscious deciding.
Give People What They Want
As one of the founding partners of MyChiroPractice™, we have made it a mission to research and pinpoint what quality new patients look for when choosing a chiropractor, then designing a memorable brand and engaging online presence that resonates with them.
In a recent 100 person focus group study we conducted, 84% of participants said that TRUST supersedes experience and price when choosing a chiropractor online. So how can you portray trust through a website that looks cookie-cutter, outdated, and overwhelming with useless information? You can’t.
In other words, if you want to continue running a successful practice and attract quality patients, you have to come to grips with one simple (and difficult) concept; it doesn’t matter what you think looks nice, it’s important what your potential patients find attractive and engaging.
Three Things You Can Do Today to Evaluate Your Image
The first step in evaluating your website is to see if it is patient friendly. Take a look at your home page and see if it follows the 30/70 rule – whereas there is 30% text to 70% imagery. Why is this important? Besides the mere fact that consumers today don’t have the time or patience to read text-heavy content on a website, larger imagery can have much more of a psychological impact than its textual counterpart. By consolidating your paragraphs into a few short blurbs, you are opening the page to large rotating photos / banners, and presenting the patient all the relevant information they need on the home page, without a need to scroll.
The second step in evaluating your website is to ask yourself “does my website stand out from the competition?” To answer this question you must be 100% open to looking at it from a non-bias perspective. If your website looks eerily similar to most other chiropractic website out there – for the exception of some color changes or your logo – chances are potential quality new patients have picked up on that too, and will make certain assumptions about the quality of your practice.
Finally, does your website look cluttered, with an overwhelming number of tabs / buttons? Research shows that custom-designed websites with smaller page counts and intuitive navigation not only attract the attention of quality new patients, but portray a much higher value and quality of care. As a matter of fact, a recent focus group study conducted by MyChiroPractice™ revealed that 77% of potential patients leave a “cluttered” website within 2.2 seconds of arriving there.
SUMMARY
Whether we like it or not, the world is moving at a very fast pace. The sooner your chiropractic practice engages and attracts the new generation of patients, the sooner you can serve your community.