5 Website Fixes to Book More Health and Wellness Patients
Your website doesn’t need a total overhaul to start converting more patients—it just needs a few smart tweaks. In this episode, I walk you through five simple website design changes that help your dream patients choose you instead of your competition. You’ll learn how to clarify your messaging, simplify navigation, and make booking with you effortless so your site works as hard as you do.
Key Takeaways
Know exactly who your website is speaking to and use their words in your copy.
Your homepage hero section should answer: who you help, how you help, where you’re located, and what to do next.
Make booking painfully easy by adding clear call-to-action buttons throughout your site and offering online scheduling.
Keep navigation simple—limit your main menu to five to seven links that guide visitors toward booking.
Practical design beats “pretty” design; clarity, consistency, and white space build trust and increase conversions.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Samantha Mabe: I am Samantha Mabe, website designer and founder of Lemon and the Sea, and this is Elevate your practice. If you're a holistic health practitioner ready to grow your practice without wasting time on things that don't work, you're in the right place. Each week I share a website, SEO, and marketing advice along with guest experts so you can bring in the right clients and feel confident about how you are showing up and serving the people that you help. Let's get started.
[00:00:38] Before we dive into this week's episode, I wanted to let you know that I am hosting a Website Co-Working Day on November 18th, where you can drop in anytime between 9:00 AM and 2:00 PM Eastern to work on your website, get feedback from me, and have access to all of my client resources so that if you have been putting your website off on your to-do list month after month, you can finally get that done and wrapped up before the end of the year.
[00:01:16] If you're wondering, "what should I actually be working on when it comes to my website?" This episode is going to be the perfect place to start because I am talking about five simple website design changes to make sure that your dream patients book with you instead of with your competition, which is what we all want to do.
1. Get Clear on Who Your Website Is Talking To
[00:01:38] The first thing you should do is to get clear on who your website is talking to. You want to know for yourself, for your marketing, who are you helping right now And what are they searching for when they finally land on your website? The more you know about your target audience, the better able you are to design a website that speaks to those people with messaging that is going to answer their questions and really understand what they are all about.
[00:02:10] My biggest tip here is one that you have heard before on the podcast and something my friend Molly Cahill says all the time. You should use the information that you get in your intake forms, in your conversations with your patients, and in the reviews those patients leave you to write the headlines and the copy of your website. You want to use the words your patients and clients are using in your copy so that you can show them that you understand them and what they are looking for, what they are experiencing, and the results that they want to get out of working with you.
2. Answer the Most Important Questions First
[00:02:51] The second thing you should be doing on your website is to make sure you're answering the most important questions. It's no secret that our attention spans have gotten shorter and shorter. Now you have less than half a second to make a first impression that keeps somebody on your website, which is going to have a big impact on whether or not they book with you. That means that your hero section, or your above the fold section, of your website needs to answer some very simple questions: who you help, how you help them, where you're located, and what they should do next. This all needs to exist in that top section of your website, in your headline, your subheading, and your call to action button. You don't want people to have to scroll down through your website to find that information. It should be very clear as soon as they land on your site from a search engine or from a referral, or from social media, exactly who you work with, what you do, where you are located, and what they should do next if they're interested in working with you.
[00:04:04] One of the recommendations I make all the time in my website reviews is for people to make their menu smaller and make sure their text is actually showing up on the screen without anybody ever having to scroll. Because people have such short attention spans, we have to very quickly answer their questions and let them know that they are in the right place.
3. Make the Next Step Painfully Easy
[00:04:30] The third thing you can do on your website to make sure you are booking more patients and that they are choosing you over your competitors is to make the next step painfully easy. This means you are probably going to have a lot more buttons than you initially expect. You want to have a very clear call to action to book an appointment, book a consultation, get in touch with us, and then you want to repeat that over and over again on every page of your website and throughout those pages.
[00:05:06] Your call to action button should live in your main menu. It should be under every headline of your page, and then you should repeat it every two to three scroll lengths on your site and put it a final time right above your footer so that no matter where somebody is on your website, when they say, "yes, this is the person I wanna work with," they can very easily find that button to take the next step.
[00:05:35] To test it, you can go to your website, both on mobile and on desktop, and make sure that if somebody only scrolls halfway down your homepage, are they able to find a button to book or contact you?
[00:05:49] The other way you can make it really easy for people to take the next step with you is to use online scheduling as much as possible. Give people a way to schedule their appointment with you at three in the morning when they are desperate for help and they are scrolling on their phone. If that's not a possibility, you at least want to give them a contact form they can fill out where they give you their name, their email, and a little bit of information. It should be quick for them to fill out. Once it's submitted, they should get information about when to expect to hear from you, and then you need to respond as quickly as possible the next day to get them scheduled or to answer any follow up questions.
[00:06:38] This is so important because when somebody is scrolling and it's after you are closed, they are not going to remember to call you back the next day. They are going to go with the practice or the practitioner that can get them scheduled when they are thinking about it. They don't wanna have to pull everything up again the next morning and go through their calendar. They want to do it now and know that it is on the books.
[00:07:08] Online scheduling is the best way to do this. If that's not something that you want to offer for some reason, then giving them a contact form to fill out is your second best option. You can still have a phone number on your website for people who do want to call and ask questions, but it should not be the only way somebody can get in touch with you, especially about that initial appointment they're trying to book.
4. Keep Your Navigation Simple
[00:07:35] The fourth tweak you can make to your website is to keep your navigation simple. Every page of your site should be pointing visitors towards your services and how to book with you. That includes every page of your site and every call to action button.
[00:07:54] That means you want to eliminate any pages that are not necessary to that process. I have lots of clients whose websites have backend pages because they offer lots of different services. It's great for SEO to have a page on acupuncture and another on cupping, and another page on cosmetic acupuncture.
[00:08:19] But in the main menu of your site, you really want to limit it to five to seven links and very few dropdowns. I recommend having your homepage, your about page, a services page, a blog and a contact page on that main menu. Any other links should live in your footer if there's something people need to be able to navigate to, or they are going to be linked from other pages. No one needs to see a dropdown for the 12 different services you offer and the 15 different conditions that you treat. That is too much information and they are going to be overwhelmed and not book with you because they are not sure where to start and where to go next.
[00:09:07] One of my clients recently told me that she gets compliments all the time on her discovery calls about how easy her website is to navigate. And that's because we really have reduced the number of pages in her main menu and the number of steps that it takes to get the information somebody needs and then get them to book their initial consultation with her.
5. Design Should Be Practical, Not Just Pretty
[00:09:30] The final thing you need to know about your website design and how you can use it to book more patients and really pull in the people who are making a decision about whether or not they want to work with you is the design should be practical and not just pretty. The point of your website's design is to make it easy for people to understand what you do and how they can work with you.
[00:09:58] You want to make sure your colors are consistent, that you're using plenty of white space, and that your fonts are simple and readable. An over-designed website with lots of images, graphics, and movement is not going to be as effective as one that is laid out simply with images that reflect the types of clients that you work with, and questions that are answered right where people are asking them.
[00:10:26] Think of your website as a journey. How can you move somebody from landing on your homepage to your booking page where they submit their information for an appointment in as few steps as possible while still answering their questions?
Small Tweaks Mean Big Results
[00:10:40] Small, strategic changes like these are going to add up and they are going to improve your website design, your user experience, and ultimately the number of conversions that you're getting from your website.
[00:10:55] If you're feeling overwhelmed or you're not sure how to actually implement this, you can join me for my Website Co-Working Day on November 18th where you're gonna get dedicated time to work on your site and instant feedback and suggestions from me on the design, layout, SEO, and messaging so that you can walk away having crossed website updates off of your to-do list for 2025.
[00:11:22] You can register at lemonandthesea.com/coworking or message me on Instagram and mention that you are interested in that coworking day.
[00:11:33] Thanks for listening to Elevate your Practice. If you enjoyed today's episode, follow the show and leave a review. It helps more practitioners find these tips and start growing their practices with confidence. And don't forget to check out the show notes for links and resources from today's episodes. I'll be back next week with more strategies to help you build a thriving practice.
