The web is constantly evolving and different trends come and go. At the same time, your clinic is evolving too. This means that, whether it’s today or several years from now, you’ll eventually want a new website that reflects these changes.
Many businesses put off creating a fresh website because of preconceptions about the associated costs. In fact, you may be surprised by just how affordable a new website can be, especially with the right approach and planning from the outset.
To help you make the most of your budget, we’ve put together our top tips to help you save money on your next clinic website:
1. Build for longevity
Before you commit to going ahead with a new website, ask your web designers about how they ‘future proof’ new websites.
- What are their thoughts about upcoming trends and technologies?
- How easy would it be to transfer content to a new design?
- Is there flexibility within the coding to add new sections to the website or delete others without impacting on the entire site?
- Is their approach to SEO in line with current best practice?
- Does the CMS system have flexibility to add new content, change the colour scheme, modify page layouts, change the header and footer, add e-commerce functionality, add plugins and external extensions, and update and manage updates in a secure environment?
- Will the CMS system remain compatible with all browsers?
- Is the web design responsive and viewable on multiple devices?
You should also ask them what options you will have if you wish to change your website in a few years’ time. A good web designer/developer will think about longevity and building a site that will grow with your business and emerging technologies.
2. Use popular, enduring web languages
At Cosmetic Digital, we create bespoke websites using our own WordPress theme as the starting point. This enables us to add in the code and functionality that you need so that your website performs in exactly the way you want it to. As well as ensuring that each website we build looks and functions in an entirely unique way, this also gives you the reassurance that the theme won’t go out of date or no longer be supported in 12 months’ time.
WordPress is a fantastic web design platform because it uses some of the web’s most common programming languages, including PHP, HTML, CSS and Javascript, all of which are widely understood and supported.
3. Use WordPress
Following on from the point above, choosing to have a WordPress site has several money saving benefits. Not only does WordPress use popular web languages, but there is also a range of easily adaptable free and paid-for themes, as well as the scope to build a unique site from scratch. WordPress is well supported, easy to manage and update, and accessible, even for the most inexperienced of website creators.
4. Use free widgets
If there’s something you want your website to feature – whether it’s a sign-up form, Twitter feed, visitor counter or something far more obscure – the chances are that there’s a free WordPress widget or plugin to add that functionality to a WordPress site. This means that you can add new features to your website as your business grows and evolves without significant – and expensive – changes to the site’s code.
5. The right CMS
WordPress’s Content Management System (CMS) is easy to use once you become familiar with its different features. At Cosmetic Digital, we can take things a step further by creating a bespoke CMS system for your bespoke website. This allows us to add in the functionality you need and make it as easy as possible to maintain and update your content without relying on anyone else to make the changes for you.
This is an effective way of future-proofing your website, as you can quickly and easily change images, treatment pages and more in-house.
6. Make sure you own your CMS
Before you have a website built, it’s important to clarify whether you will have full ownership of its CMS once the website is complete. The last thing you want is to have to pay for access every time you want to update a page as the costs can add up quickly.
7. Invest in your SEO
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is always evolving as Google and the other major search engines tweak and refine their algorithms to create the best possible user experience. By investing some time, energy and budget to SEO from the outset, you can ensure that your website is built on the right foundations.
Simple approaches like a single search focus to every page, proper heading tags, enticing meta descriptions, alt tags on images, readable copy, and well-thought out internal and external links can all help bring high quality web traffic to your site and boost your sales. In turn, this will increase your profits and help you save money on advertising and SEO changes in the future.
