Every website needs a way for interested patients to contact your office, “opt-in” to become a subscriber and, if you are ready to engage readers, a way for readers to leave a comment. Most of these features can be easily (and cheaply) added to your website via plugins. This is episode 4 of 4 on WordPress plugins.
This post corresponds to our latest podcast episode of “Russ and Randy” – a podcast on Healthcare and Medical Internet Marketing. We hope you like “3 ‘Must Have’ Plugins for Your Website” You can find us on iTunes …and now, ReachMD.com!
Contact Page
The 3 most important pages of a website are the: Home, About and Contact pages. Your Home Page is the first chance to convey your message about what services or goods you provide. If patients are interested in learning more about the practice, hospital or your doctors, the About Page is your chance to really start to engage the reader.
Those who are interested in making an appointment (hooray!) need a method to contact you. Your Contact Page should contain all the ways you offer patients to contact you. It may simply be a phone number, fax and email addresses are optional. For instance, if you are not going to monitor and answer emails, do NOT list an email address.
While you could pay a designer to create a contact page, Russ and I love Contact Form 7 to create contact pages…and for free.
Grow Your Subscriber List
Mailchimp is a very popular ESP (email service provider). Mailmunch is a plugin which adds design and function to your subscription “opt-in” box so that readers may follow your website.
Mailchimp is free (until you start really growing) for most users. It collects email addresses of readers who follow your site. Every new post to your website automatically gets sent to your followers.
Mailmunch allows more customized design of your opt-in box. You can insert a Mailmunch opt-in almost anywhere on your site, including pop-ups.
Russ has a few remarks about Leadpages and Thrive Leads for more sophisticated list building.
Comments
The best type of website allows comments to be made at the end of an article. This really engages the reader, and when answered (by you), is a powerful form of social media (threads or discussions on display for the general public).
WordPress allows you to simply enable comments within the admin portion of the website. DISQUS is a plugin which allow comments on your site and improves engagement with your readers.
See you next week!
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All the best!
Russ…and Randy
Healthcare and Medical Internet Marketing
Healthcare’s Rx for Web and Social
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