Good enough is no longer good enough when it comes to veterinary websites and increasing pet appointments. Turning more website visitors into clients requires key features now considered essential for veterinary websites to turn more clicks into clients.
The Top 7 Essential Veterinary Website Features
01. Create an Impactful First Impression Through Brand Identity
Brand identity goes far beyond having a practice logo. Brand identity encompasses everything connected to your veterinary website, from choosing the right color scheme and visuals to fonts and page layouts. The overall goal of brand identity is to create an immediate impact with pet owners and leave a lasting impression so that pet owners immediately recognize your brand no matter where they encounter your practice online.
Brand identity also involves your practice’s personality and values and how you reflect them in veterinary website design, from the content that greets pet owners on your homepage to staff bios, blog posts, and even your service descriptions.
The key thing to understand: Although branding and practice marketing are often used interchangeably, branding is not marketing. Branding is designed to create a distinct identity for your practice in the minds of pet owners and thereby stand your practice apart from competing practices, and marketing is designed to increase awareness of your practice and contact by pet owners.
02. Make It Easy for Pet Owners to Contact Your Practice
Like the strategy behind brand identity, making it easy for pet owners to contact your practice involves more than prominently placing your phone number, email address, or a contact form on the homepage of your veterinary website. Expediting easy contact with your practice involves providing an easy way for pet owners to make contact wherever they encounter your practice online.
The simplest example involves your social media presence. Where applicable, make sure to include links to your veterinary website so pet owners can quickly and easily find out more about your practice and (ideally) schedule an appointment.
For Facebook posts, this can involve directly pasting a link to your contact page or placing a clickable link in the text if your post involves something like an image that isn’t clickable.
Other practice marketing elements that should include easy method of contact:
Indeed, you should provide easy, direct contact with your practice wherever and whenever possible.
03. Create Compelling Calls to Action
In their most basic form, calls to action (CTAs) are simple prompts or messages that ask prospective clients to take some sort of action, such as “Contact Us,” and in many cases, such instruction-based CTAs are appropriate. Yet a far more compelling CTA is value-based—one that lets pet owners what they will get by doing something.
A few examples:
- Get 50% off your first pet wellness exam.
- Save time with our online prescription refill service.
- Get instant access to trusted pet health information.
04. Provide Pet Owners with Trusted Pet Health Education Resources
Pet owners want veterinarians to provide trusted pet health education resources. Per a recent survey published by The Veterinary Record, “Owners expressed a desire for their veterinarians to recommend online pet health resources that veterinarians themselves had appraised” because pet owners know what the AVMA knows. While the internet can be a good source of pet health information, “it’s also a major source of misinformation.” This naturally makes it difficult for pet owners to separate the good information from the bad, which is why pet owners want client education information provided or recommended by veterinary practices.
While veterinarians understand the value of client education to improve compliance, a recent PLOS One study found some veterinarians had discontinued things like client education handouts because they took too much time to prepare.
Moreover, the peer-reviewed journal Veterinary Evidence recently found that although pet owners wanted veterinarians to direct them to trusted online sources of pet health information, with specific direction towards online pet health resources “that were created by the veterinary profession or that their veterinarian had contributed content to,” nearly all surveyed pet owners said that veterinarians rarely directed them towards such online resources.
As a result, the risks of the internet remain for countless pet owners.
- In 2022, for example, the peer-reviewed scientific journal Animals released findings from a comparative study in which 48% or surveyed small animal practices estimated that 40-79% of their clients used the internet to find pet health information.
- The survey findings published in Animals align with those of The Veterinary Record, which found that 6% of surveyed pet owners used the internet to find pet health information.
When you provide what pet owners want by integrating a trusted pet owner education resource like ClientEd into your website, you not only attract and retain clients by positioning your practice as a go-to-source of expert-written information. You support optimal compliance by empowering pet owners with the tools they need to be active and involved members of a pet’s healthcare support team—and do so while saving time to stay focused on patient care.
>> Here’s why practices choose ClientEd.
05. Tell Your Practice Story
Your About Us page should involve more than a summary of the services you provide. Lasting client relationships are built through human connection. So, use your About Us page (or other relevant spaces on your veterinary website) to tell your practice story (your mission, values, origins, etc.) strengthened by highlighting your care team.
Photos play a key role in storytelling. Whether they’re images of milestone celebrations, candid images of team members in action, or community involvement, images add layers of authenticity and relatability, and build a deeper connection with pet owners visiting your website.
06. Offer Search Functionality
The faster pet owners can find the information they want, the faster they become engaged with your website, and search functionality facilitates this.
- According to UX Booth, roughly 30% of people will use a search bar and will be highly motivated to follow through with the reason behind their search.
- The most important rule in search bar design is to make it easily noticeable.
- Common placement is toward the top center or top right of a webpage.
Make sure your veterinary website design includes optimal search bar placement for mobile devices. Per HubSpot, 54% of people primarily use their phones to search products and services.
07. Provide Easy Overall Navigation
In alignment with the principles behind search bars, make sure your veterinary website is easy to navigate because (like pet owners) you know how it is when you want to find something online.
You want to find things quickly and easily, and the longer it takes, the more frustrating it feels. Well, it’s the same thing for pet owners when they reach your veterinary website. The easier it is for them to find something, they quicker they become engaged with your website. The longer it takes pet owners to find something, the more likely they are to abandon your website.
Summary
To attract and convert more website visitors into clients, the words essential veterinary website features naturally denote basic elements. Yet in a competitive veterinary market, most veterinary websites include far more than the basics.
The best veterinary websites that optimally serve pet owners and practice goals involve additional elements found with WebDVM custom veterinary websites.
Backed by 30 years of proven veterinary industry experience, WebDVM websites are custom designed to turn more website visitors into clients while simultaneously optimizing practice efficiency.
