Is Your Practice's Site Mobile-Friendly?

For medical and healthcare professionals who are working toward increasing their online presence, making sure that their new website is mobile-friendly is a great way to grow awareness of their practice and substantially increase their site's visibility.

According to a recent Pew survey, 44 percent of patients look up their physicians online. Additionally, one in five patients uses online physician-rating sites. Patients of all ages are turning to the internet to research medical practices, locate doctors in their area and find valuable health information.

If you're contemplating creating a new site for your medical practice, it's vital that it be user-friendly when viewed on a smartphone or tablet. Another Pew survey found that 56 percent of adults now own a smartphone and 35 percent of Americans ages 16 and older own a tablet. Many patients often use these devices to conveniently look up information while on the go whether it's checking what the weather will be like that day to seeking out a new general practitioner.

There's a major difference between having a regular website that shows up on an iPhone or Android screen and having a mobile-friendly site that's specifically designed to accommodate smartphones and tablet users. When sites that are only designed for desktop computers are viewed on a smartphone or other device, they take longer to load and may be more difficult to scroll through and navigate than a full mobile website.

If a site is viewable on a smartphone but its text, spacing, links, buttons and zoom options are not adapted to this unique format, visitors may become frustrated and give up on trying to view your site altogether. They may decide to try to visit your website on their desktop computer at a later time, but more often than not, visitors will move on to a medical site that is mobile-friendly.

If your practice's current site isn't mobile-friendly, don't put off making it optimized for mobile! It's projected that by 2015, more people will use mobile devices than computers to view sites. Make sure that your practice's site is prepared.

Although every site created using Dr. Leonardo is viewable on a mobile device, the Dr. Leonardo Mobile Option will make your website load and respond even faster on smartphones and tablets. The Dr. Leonardo Mobile Option will determine each visitor's type of device and its operating system, and automatically reformat your entire website to suit their experience.

The resulting pull-down menus are simple to navigate using one hand, and text is easy to read because it's optimized for viewing on the mobile device. With the Dr. Leonardo mobile option, there's no more pinching and expanding to access menu selections, buttons or links.

Does Your Healthcare Practice Need a Website?

Create your own high quality, professional site in four incredibly easy steps using Dr. Leonardo, a convenient Internet Presence Management tool that also allows users to fill their practice's site with informative patient education and award-winning images. Click here to get started!