Chiropractic Website Design: What Your Clinic Needs for Online Peak Performance

As a chiropractor in private practice, you rely a lot on your staff to keep things running smoothly while you focus on delivering care to your patients. How would it feel to have your own 24/7 sales and marketing rep that was always working on your behalf to bring in more ideal patients AND never called in sick nor asked for a raise?

Does this sound too good to be true?

Here’s the truth: when you have a well designed chiropractic website, it can actually serve as your “silent sales and marketing rep”.

Potential patients will often look you up on Google and visit your website before they visit your clinic. Thus, a poorly designed chiropractic website (especially on the mobile view) could be turning away visitors and costing you possible patients.

I’d like to give you an overview of the chiropractic website design process.

Overview of the Chiropractic Website Design Process

Here is a bird’s eye view of what’s involved in creating your chiropractic website:

1. Planning

2. Domain

3. Hosting

4. WordPress Software

5. WordPress Theme

6. WordPress Plugins

7. Website Content

8. Quality Assurance

Planning

Just as you would make a blueprint before building a house, you should make one before building your website.

You’ll want to consider your branding elements such as your:

• color scheme
• font scheme
• logo

Other items to consider (before you hire someone or take the DIY route) include:

• establishing which web pages you’ll need (such as Home, About, Services, Contact, etc.)
• coming up with content for those pages
• photos of you, your staff, inside of your clinic, etc.
• a welcome video (and/or other video content)

Domain

This refers to your website address (www.mychiropracticbusiness.com). If we think of your website like a house, the domain is like the address to your house. The shorter you can make your domain, the better.

I recommend Namecheap to all my clients because of their pricing, support, and they offer free domain privacy.

Hosting

This is like the “virtual land” for your website. Out of all the hosting providers I’ve tried, I like SiteGround the most because of their level of security and support.

WordPress Software

WordPress is a content management system (CMS) or framework that enables you to create and update your website without dealing with any code. Out of all the different frameworks out there, I recommend WordPress the most because of the vibrant community, the ability to create or update a website without special coding skills, and search engines love it. There is no charge to take the WordPress software from www.wordpress.org and install it onto your website.

On a similar note, SiteGround is one of the best hosts for your WordPress website. They actually make it very easy to install WordPress.

WordPress Theme

A WordPress theme refers to the look and layout of your website. If we think of your website like a house, the theme would be like the paint or wallpaper on your bedroom walls.

Some themes are free while many premium themes cost some money. I recommend a good page builder theme (such as Divi or Elementor) so that you’ll be able to really customize your website without knowing code.

WordPress Plugins

WordPress plugins are like the apps on your smartphone. Just as you have apps for checking the weather, requesting an Uber ride, etc., you have plugins for certain functions like cybersecurity or speeding up your website.

Just as too many apps on your smartphone can make it run less efficiently, too many plugins can do the same to your website. 

Website Content

After all the “behind the scenes” matters are taken care of, now you can focus on what will be put on your chiropractic website.

This involves establishing your web pages along with the text, photos, etc. you’ll be putting on those pages. A welcome video on your about page along with photos of you and your team can do an excellent job of building trust and rapport with your visitors.

If you need help getting your messaging down, I recommend checking out Donald Miller’s Building a StoryBrand.

Quality Assurance

After you finish putting your website together (whether you hire someone or take the DIY route), you’ll want to conduct some basic quality assurance (QA) before launching and sharing with the world.

QA can include making sure:

• all the links work
• all the forms work
• that each web page displays well on desktop, tablet, and mobile devices
• that there are no mispellings or grammatical errors
• that the web pages don’t take too long to load
• that overall your visitors have a pleasant experience on your website

You could also use a service like UserTesting to have someone visit your website and offer video feedback.

Additional Items for Your Chiropractic Website

While the above items serve as the basic foundation for your “silent sales and marketing rep”, here are some additional items you’ll need in order to cover all your bases and really achieve online peak performance:

1. Terms of Service Page

2. Privacy Policy Page

3. HIPAA Notice

4. Online Accessibility

5. New Patient Funnel

6. Appointment Funnel

7. Email Marketing Funnel

8. Proper Display of Your Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP)

9. Social Media

Terms of Service

This page is very important for protecting your intellectual property (i.e., your logo, content, and anything else on your website). If someone else were to use your website name, clinic name, etc., and make it their own on their website, having a Terms of Service in place lets them know that it’s wrong and you have the ability to challenge them in court.

Privacy Policy

This is another very important page that many people tend to forget about. A Privacy Policy lets your visitors know that you treat their personal info with full respect and confidentiality. Anytime someone fills out one of your online forms or schedules an appointment online, this lets your visitors know that you don’t share their info with anyone else.

HIPAA Notice

This is a more specific type of privacy policy that lets your visitors and patients know that you’ll treat their personal medical info with the fullest respect and confidentiality. It also lets your visitors and patients know how their personal medical info might be shared and also how they are able to obtain copies of it.

Online Accessibility

This refers to how a disabled person is able to use and benefit from your website. For example, if a deaf person were to visit your website and check out your welcome video, providing captions for the video would help make your website more accessible. This is a loaded subject that is continually evolving. For more info (and the latest updates) you can view the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) here.

There are plugins that can assist with making your WordPress website more accessible. I recommend the WP Accessibility Helper or UserWay.

SIDE NOTE: this website utilizes the WP Accessibility Helper plugin as indicated by the wheelchair icon in the upper right.

New Patient Funnel

A funnel refers to a series of pages designed to guide the visitor to an end goal. This is how a new patient funnel could look like:

• have a button on your home page and/or in your header that states something like “New Patient Special”
• after clicking the button, they’re taken to a landing page that goes into detail on how your new patient special works (e.g., you might offer an xray, consultation, and/or 1 – 3 adjustments at $99) along with a button they click on to take advantage of your special
• after clicking the button to get this special, they might be taken to a form to collect some information about them and/or any personal issues they might be having (PRO TIP: make sure to display a link to your Privacy Policy and HIPAA Notice letting them know that any submitted info will be treated with the fullest respect and confidentiality)
• they submit the form and are taken to a confirmation page
• they might then receive a confirmation email thanking them for becoming a new patient and letting them know when their appointment is
• if you wanted to take things a step further, you could then have a member of your staff call the new patient to remind them of their appointment and see if they have any questions

Since you’re the boss of your chiropractic business and website, it’s up to you how you’d like to construct your new patient funnel. Whereas some chiropractors have new patients submit all their health forms online, you might prefer to have new patients download the health forms, print them out, fill them out, and then bring to the appointment.

All in all it’s all about making it easy for your website visitors to become new patients and take them from browsing your website to showing up for their first appointment.

Appointment Funnel

This is very similar to the new patient funnel. The only difference is that the appointment funnel could work for new or established patients. This is how an appointment funnel could work:

• have a button on your home page and/or in the header that states something like “Make an Appointment”
• after clicking this button, they are taken to a page that displays available dates and times
• the visitor chooses their desired date and time
• they would then receive an email and/or text confirmation about their upcoming appointment

The main goal is to get them from browsing your website to showing up for an appointment with you.

Email Marketing Funnel

You might have some website visitors who are not yet ready to see you nor receive any chiropractic care. This is where an email marketing funnel comes in. The goal is to convert random website visitors into prospective patients.

This is how an email marketing funnel could work:

• on your home page and/or around the footer area, you offer a valuable opt in freebie in exchange for their name and email address (such as a video or pdf on the top 5 ways to deal with back pain naturally)
• after they submit their name and email address, they are taken to a thank you page
• about 5 – 10 minutes later, they receive an automated welcome email containing the promised freebie and a little more info about you and your clinic
• then about once or twice a week, you send periodic emails to offer value and stay top of mind (e.g., you could do a mini series on common misconceptions about chiropractors or what to do after being in a car accident)
• a few times a month, you might nudge your subscribers to take advantage of your new patient special
• the whole goal is to develop an ongoing relationship with your subscribers so that when they are ready to make an appointment with you, they will be more likely to reach out to you

NAP

This stands for Name, Address, and Phone number. In order to get on Google’s good side for local search engine optimization (SEO), the footer of your website needs to display your NAP. It also makes your website look much more professional.

Social Media

In addition to a professional chiropractic website, you’ll want to have social media pages for reaching out to prospective patients. The top three platforms I recommend getting involved on are Facebook, YouTube, and Yelp. You’ll also want to display your social icons in the footer.

Conclusion

Now you have a comprehensive overview on what’s involved in effective chiropractic website design. Just remember that in most cases: before people visit your clinic in person, they will visit your website first. Your website can be a very effective tool for getting more ideal patients to make an appointment with you and choose you for their chiropractic care.

Before you go, be sure to get your free report down below on the #1 adjustment you must make in order to get more patients. As a bonus: you’ll be able to see an example of my email marketing funnel in action.

Lone Star ChiroWebsites has been recognized as one of Top Web Development Companies In San Antonio by DesignRush