Smart by Name, Smart by Nature By on October 11, 2013

"I expected a lot for my investment,
but I didn't expect this much this quickly."

Every business has to have a website these days, right? What was once viewed as a luxury has become an essential cog in even the most modest marketing strategy.

Yet, it can be so much more.

Plastic surgeon Ken Smart understood this when he purchased a Lucid CMS®™ website from Einstein Medical in March 2013. He envisioned a site that would serve as a virtual extension of his physical practice, and challenged us to tailor its content and visual elements accordingly. When the new site was launched five months later, the result was a dramatic increase in virtually every measure of user interest and engagement. In other words, prospective patients weren't just visiting the site - they were staying.

The Challenge: Encapsulating What Makes Dr. Smart's Practice Unique - In Website Form

Dr. Smart had a clear goal in mind when he established Frisco Plastic Surgery and Medspa. He wanted to build the sort of plastic surgery practice that he would want to go to if he were a patient. Every element of his practice was designed to promote the comfort, safety, and overall satisfaction of his patients, each of whom he and his staff felt privileged to serve.

The warmth, compassion, and commitment to quality that were the hallmarks of the practice added up to a superior patient experience. The challenge before us was to deliver a website that crystallized this experience for Internet users who were searching for a plastic surgeon in the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area.

The Solution: Custom Content, Compelling Visuals, and a Good User Experience

The Internet has created a new breed of consumer. Traditional forms of marketing, such as print ads, television and radio commercials, and billboards, must first capture the attention of an audience focused on a completely unrelated activity before they can make their appeals. However, when people visit a website, it is usually the result of a purposeful search for information. They choose to enter the site. This presents a window of opportunity to convert them from interested visitors to active consumers.

Bright Local (2013)¹

That window closes in mere seconds, however. Internet consumers are not a captive audience. Unless they are engaged immediately by a website, they will leave.

There is a similar dynamic at play when patients first arrive at a medical practice. In Dr. Smart's case, his patients enter an elegantly appointed, uncluttered office where they are greeted by a friendly, welcoming staff. This first impression is engineered to make people want to be there.

Pew Internet (2013)²

Why would his website be engineered any differently?

With this in mind, we set out to create a site that would engage users and convey the essence of Dr. Smart's practice by:

Developing original content tailored to Dr. Smart's unique voice - Nothing alienates prospective patients faster than generic content. According to a Content Marketing Institute study, 61 percent of people are more likely to buy from a company that delivers custom content.
Integrating compelling visual content, including videos and photos - Zabisco Digital reported that 40 percent of people respond better to visual information than plain text.
Producing a clean, easy-to-use, aesthetically appealing design that reinforced Dr. Smart's brand - A Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab survey found that 46.1 percent of people determine the credibility of a company primarily on the design of its website.

Of course, a solution is only as good as the results it produces. In August 2013, we launched Dr. Smart's site with high hopes and even higher expectations.

The Result: A Smart Choice, Indeed

So far, Dr. Smart's decision to launch a new Lucid CMS®™ website has been, well, a smart one. In measuring how effectively a site engages users, we consider such metrics as:

Bounce rate: the percentage of visits in which a user left after viewing only a single page
Duration of visit per page: the average amount of time that a user spends on each page
Pages per visit: the average number of pages viewed per visit

Historically, the medical website design we created for Dr. Smart in 2008 had performed well in these areas. However, in comparing the performance of his new site in the 45 days since its launch to that of his previous site in the 45 days prior, we found: