Cost Analysis of a Website By: Alicia Sells, RDH

The people most likely to be online are your more affluent patients. They are looking for information to help them learn more about procedures and who in their neighborhood is the best choice for a care provider. They want to feel comfortable with their decision and your website is yet another channel of communication to reach them. In today’s market, if you’re not online, you’re being left behind!

What you should expect a website
to do for you
From the initial contact with your office throughout your doctor-patient relationship, your website is a 24 hours/day, 7 days/week information and feedback channel for your patients and potential patients. A website projects a more personal image to your patients. They feel more catered to and “connected”. The improved communication between you and your patients helps build better relationships.

Your website provides potential patients a “peek through the back door” and gives you and your office a “high-tech” image. Potential patients can become more familiar with you and your practice before they come in. They may even learn about a treatment for a condition they didn’t realize a dentist could help them with, like snoring or TMD problems.

Your front desk can use your site as a valuable tool to refer new patients, and patients of record that haven’t been in for a while, for a map and directions, patient registration forms (including those for HIPAA), and payment options. Being able to refer patients to the website for common questions can save a lot of time in the front office.

If you have sufficient content to answer the patients’ questions and make them feel more informed, treatment plan acceptance can be increased. Whether patients learn about a procedure prior to coming to your office or whether you refer them to your site after a visit, we all know educated patients are more accepting of their treatment plan. In addition, if they have some of their questions answered by your website they are likely to use it as a resource in the future and refer friends and family to your site as well.

I often discuss with one parent their child’s need for orthodontic treatment, sealants or restorative procedures. Many times, especially with orthodontics, it is the “absent parent” that throws up the roadblock. They may not feel that an “arch expander” is necessary. They weren’t present to hear my wonderful explanation and see my modern in-operatory DVD patient education! I usually refer the parent who was in the office to our website so they can show their spouse what an arch expander is and why their child needs one. A well designed website will echo everything the way you have presented it and allow one parent to show the other parent what the child needs and why.

Detailed patient education can also be extremely helpful for specialty practices. When we refer a patient to a specialist it is very helpful if the specialist has a detailed website. The patient feels more comfortable about the referral if they can get to know the doctor and “visit” the office via their website first. An effective specialist website provides information about the doctor, directions to the office and information about payment options. It also helps with acceptance of the treatment plan if the patient can learn more about the recommended procedures. A website offers a unique channel of patient education since the information can easily be shared with other family members and friends regardless of their geographic location. Imagine how useful it would be if the patient could receive validation from their friend or relative across the country simply by sharing a link to a website!

Determining Return on Investment
(ROI)
I’m frequently asked if our website is cost effective. In other words, what’s the ROI? In our practice we track production by source of referral. For calendar year 2002, we spent $15,900 on our Yellow Pages ad and generated $28,900 in production. During that same period we spent $2.794 on our website and generated $11,082 in production. Assuming an overhead rate of 60% that translates into an ROI of –27% for our Yellow Pages and +59% for our website!

When evaluating ROI, it’s important to realize that measurement is difficult at best. What if a current patient tells a friend your geographic location. The friend looks in the Yellow Pages and finds a practice at that location. They see that you have a website, and visit you online. Is that a personal referral? Yellow Pages? Website? Even though we ask the patient for all the reasons behind their decision to choose us, our practice management software only allows us to enter a single source of referral.

Also the actual ROI for any referral source is likely to be understated since we don’t always remember to record a referral source. Further complicating matters, any accurate ROI measurement for a website should take into consideration the increased case acceptance and additional elective production due to existing patients’ use of your website. It’s clear than an effective website is cost effective, and when you factor in the ancillary benefits it’s likely to be much more so than we imagined.