A dental website has one job. It helps someone who needs a dentist decide that yours is the right one, and it makes the next step easy.
This guide comes from the research behind our templates. We looked closely at 60 real websites for dentists, children's dentists, orthodontists, eye care clinics and hearing clinics, from national chains to single-office practices. Here is what the good ones do.
Let people say why they came
A first-time patient, a parent looking for a children's dentist and someone with a broken tooth tonight all land on the same home page. The sites that worked best for them asked "why are you here?" right away. They showed a short list of reasons, such as emergency, new patient, braces or kids, and each one led to the right next step.
Nine of the 60 sites did this. Most of the rest opened with a photo and a slogan, and made the visitor hunt.
You can do it with a few large buttons under your headline. Put your phone number in plain sight, and on phones pin a bar to the bottom of the screen with Call and Book written out in words. Older patients and busy parents tap words faster than bare icons.
Answer the questions that make people hesitate
Most people do not book because they are not sure about something. Give each worry a short, plain answer near the top of the site, not buried in a FAQ.
- Do you take my insurance? List the plans you accept, or say in one sentence what happens if you are out of network.
- What will it cost? If you offer a membership plan for patients without insurance, or a set price for a new-patient exam, say so. If prices depend on the person, explain how you work them out.
- What happens at the first visit? Three or four short steps: forms, a conversation, an exam, how long it takes.
- Can I be seen today? Say how you handle emergencies, and give an after-hours number if you have one.
- I'm nervous. Write a short, honest paragraph about how you work with anxious patients.
- Practical things. Parking, wheelchair access, languages spoken, and a Spanish version if many of your patients read it.
Only state prices and offers you can keep current. An old offer still sitting on a site looks worse than none.
Show the real office and the real team
The most memorable dental sites opened with their own team standing in their own waiting room or on their own street. Stock photos of models are mostly a chain habit, and patients can tell.
Give each dentist a name, a role, credentials as they appear on the license, and two or three warm sentences about why they do this work. Photos taken on a phone in good daylight beat stock images.
Be careful with proof. Show awards and ratings only if they are real, current and you can point to the source. Phrases like "best dentist in town," "award-winning" or "number one" invite trouble unless you can back them up.
Keep outcome language and smile photos in check
Use calm, factual words about treatment. Skip "perfect smile" and "transformation." Before-and-after photos of faces need written consent from each patient, and advertising rules for dentists vary by state, so check with your state dental board before you publish them.
Keep health details out of your forms and tools
Your contact form and appointment-request form should ask for a name, a phone number and a good time to call. They should not ask about symptoms or medical history. The same goes for chat tools, text tools and analytics: they can quietly collect whatever a visitor types.
If your practice falls under US health privacy rules, the vendors behind your forms and tools may need to sign a business associate agreement. We offer a Compliance-Sensitive Build: Healthcare add-on, Starting at $749, that covers vendor selection and keeps health information out of analytics and standard forms.
We don't certify compliance, and your own compliance program stays your responsibility. Ask your privacy officer or attorney to review the finished site.
Make it work well on a phone
Many people look up a dentist on their phone, sometimes in pain. A few things the weaker sites in our research got wrong:
- Pop-ups that cover the first screen.
- Words baked into a promotional image, which are hard to read on a small screen and invisible to screen readers.
- A video background with no still image, which showed up as a black box.
- Pages that stop after a single screen.
Test your own site on a phone before you test it anywhere else.
The pages most practices need
A single-office practice can do well with five or six pages:
- Home.
- Services, with a short section for each treatment you want to be found for.
- New patients, covering insurance, forms and the first visit.
- Meet the team.
- Contact, with hours, address, map and phone.
Our Starter package covers up to 5 pages. The Business package covers up to 12 pages and includes online scheduling, Google Business Profile setup and local search work, for practices that want patients to find them and book without calling.
- Starter: Starting at $249 with a template.
- Business: Starting at $899 with a template.
Every project gets a written quote, so the final price depends on your pages and features.
What to do next
If you already have a website, run it through our website check and see where it stands. If you are starting fresh, tell us about your practice and we will come back with a written quote.