Two Dentists Who Both Have a Website
This Part
Picture two people who have both done exactly what they were told to do. Both have a website. Both paid for it, both have a domain in their own name, and on both sites there is a photo of the practice, a phone number and a list of treatments. From the outside there is nothing to tell them apart.
One of these two sites brings in a few patients a month. The other brings in none. Not few — genuinely none. Its owner doesn’t open it themselves even once a year.
What the First Site Looks Like
Built three years ago. It has four or five sections: About Us, Services, Gallery, Contact. The Services section is a list. Implants, laminates, root canals, orthodontics. Under each one, two lines of description whose origin is unclear, because those same two lines appear word for word on other sites.
The last time anything in it changed, it was to change the phone number. The text isn’t wrong. The design isn’t bad either — sometimes it is even prettier than the second site.
What the Second Site Looks Like
It does not necessarily look more professional. But two things about it are different.
First, every treatment has its own separate, dedicated text that answers the patient’s real question, not the question we think the patient ought to ask. A patient does not ask for “implant services.” They ask how long they have to wait after an extraction, or why they have been told they need a bone graft. That text was written for exactly that person.
Second, it is updated regularly. Not every day, but every month it is one step further along than the month before.
Where the Real Difference Is
The first site was written for someone who has already decided to come. Someone who knows your name, has found your site, and only wants to make sure the practice is real. For that person a site is a business card. The trouble is that you already had that person.
The second site was written for someone who does not know your name. They type their question, find an answer, read the answer, and only then look at who wrote it. That order is what matters: question first, then answer, then person. The reverse does not work.
The second difference is that one is finished and the other is still in progress. A site that was finished on the day it was delivered starts ageing from that same day, and does not stop.
What Is Not the Difference
Money. The dead site usually cost more, because the cost was paid all at once — and the more it cost, the less likely you are to touch it again.
Design. The death of a site has no outward sign. It opens, it loads, it throws no errors. It is just that nobody comes to it.
The owner being technical. The dentist whose site works does not necessarily know anything about code. The only thing they have is that they can add a text without booking someone else’s time — and that matters a great deal, and we will come back to it later and learn it.
So What Is the Question
The question is not whether you have a website. Both of the people above did. The question is what the thing that was built was built to do, and what is supposed to happen in it.
Most practice websites are built on the assumption that a site means an introduction. An introduction is not bad, but it is very little, and for someone who does not know you it does not work at all.
The next part is about what a practice website exactly is and what it is not. Until that definition is clear, everything said after it rides on a false assumption.