Here in Dubai and all across the UAE businesses are always trying to stay up-to-date, especially the hospitals and healthcare sector’s websites are even more important as more people who are planning a visit will also go through the website before or sometimes after their visit to the hospital and that rate is higher than any other business. Which also makes the website important for hospitals than any other traditional business. The healthcare sector in UAE is quit modernized and the mostly the services are provided through a health insurance, which is also another reason people visit the websites and search for the healthcare facilities before planning a visit there. This lead to the overall change in the general behavior of most of the patients who need any healthcare service. People prefer to go through the website to learn more about the facilities, services and doctors as well before visiting to any healthcare facility.

This trend makes the hospital website more important than ever before. It is a common perception that almost 70% of the website managers revamp their website once in a year or make big changes in the design to cope up with the ever changing trends. If you are redesigning your web design or simply auditing it here are some website trends for hospitals in 2021 which will help you building a good relationship with your patients:

Hospital Web Design Trend No. 1: Content

As we all know the pandemic was traumatizing for the masses, people are responding better to empathy, optimism and resilience. That is what they are expecting from their healthcare service providers and hospitals. The content should provide a hope, reflect positivity and optimism. The content tone should be light, less academic and assuring the visitors about their safety and protection against the COVID inside the hospital. As there are only designated hospitals and clinics who are handling COVID patients, so most of the healthcare facilities are already isolated from it, but still you have to assure your customers that you your facility will be fully equipped and protected against the COVID. The visuals, images and graphics should be chosen wisely, use different ethnicities, genders, ages and also use happy faces instead of showing sick people. The human brain respond much better to a visual than to a text, so try to keep the text at minimum and use more good images which show hope, courage and positivity.

The textual content and imagery will form a unique user experience, less text means more focus on Call to Action (CTA), put CTA in different places and focus more on it. Another important and very impactful strategy is to use testimonials and reviews of the healthcare staff and doctors. This will encourage more online patients to convert. Make sure you textual content and taglines stand out very well. Use small taglines instead of large paragraphs. Think from the patient’s point of view, think of the basic questions that they could have in mind before making a decision. Prepare the content that answer there question or at least provide them some information, avoid too much information, and avoid ambiguous or unclear details. Make your content precise, brief and very positive. Due to the pandemic scenario the people have become more sensitive, more self-conscious and aware, so your content can be strong driving force in generating online leads and conversions.

Hospital Web Design Trend No. 2: User Experience and User Interface (UX/UI)

The user experience and user interface which is also referred to as UX/UI are very important components of a web design for hospital. Studies have been done in past few years which suggested that the marketers all around the world believe that their healthcare or hospital website is getting 90% of new patients from their websites. The consumer surveys conducted in many developed and under developing countries shows that almost 50% to 60% of the patient have visited the hospital website before making a decision. Those stats shows that the UX/UI plays an extremely important role in hospital website and also in overall growth and revenue generation. The first thing that any patient expect from a hospital web design is to flawless and professional. People tend to judge the business on the bases of its website and online brand identity.

Similar studies have also shown that almost 80% of the patients are unhappy with their digital experience with their hospital. This shows a huge potential, if you improve your user experience and user interface (UX/UI) you can have a great competitive advantage. People often get confused about the UX and UI and think both are same but in reality both are not same. The user experience or UX is the elements of the web design which serve a particular purpose and form the entire customer journey or in our case patient journey, however the user interface or UI is the overall look and feel of the web design. The best approach to design a great UX/UI is to try to add all those things which you think your patients will be needing while visiting on your website or which you think people might be searching. Avoid irrelevant content at the homepage, create different sections for different departments, organize the content and interconnect relevant pages. Make sure the taglines are most visible, the CTA is at most obvious position and add widgets and shortcuts throughout the entire website. Chose the color scheme which looks calm, make text and media more visible, and avoid using very bright tone or very dark hues. White color always attracts attentions and make content and CTA more visible.

Hospital Web Design Trend No. 3: Simple Professional Design

In the hospital and other healthcare sectors the most important thing that will drive or influence a consumer’s decision is the information. Everyone who is looking for a hospital or a particular treatment all they want is to acquire relevant information about that, if they found helpful information they will definitely convert. Such designs are also called minimalist web designs. The main objective of such designs is to keep the web element limited and focus more on the important sections. This way the user’s attentions can be directed towards the important sections, such as sales pitches, CTA (call to action) and any other area or information which can convert a prospect into lead. A visually rich design with intense graphics can easily distract the visitor. Since the hospital website have to provide much more information than any ordinary business, so the right approach is to choose a simple or flat design that focus more on the content rather graphics and visuals.

These days’ businesses are adopting more graphic rich web designs in Dubai and other parts of UAE however for a hospital website, which might not work well. A flat information rich design will maintain the focus of the visitor on the desired content and such designs are also very helpful for building up effective customer journeys for the patients. Graphic rich websites are usually slower than traditional websites, which also reduce user engagements and it badly hamper user experience. It is not like the multimedia content and or rich visual graphics are bad, they are not bad if used on a limited scale. In fact the videos and multimedia content results in more patient engagements and improve patient experience and patient journey. Using videos and animated content is also good, it should never shadow the information and textual content. The hospitals and healthcare websites are the one where visitors tend to read more than on any other type of website.

Hospital Web Design Trend No. 4: Features and Functionalities

Another hospital web design trend which is gaining popularity in Dubai and also in other emirates of UAE is having useful features and functionalities in the website. Which can improve the user experience and user journey. Such functionalities help improving visitors experience and also improve brand reputation and brand identity. Here are some of the trendy features and functionalities of a hospital website:

Online Appointment Booking Module

The online appointment booking module is a user friendly feature for a hospital website. A completely interactive online booking module can allow the prospects and patients to book an appointment online, this way they don’t have to come to the hospital and wait in the queue for the treatment. They can instantly get attended and this will improve their experience, journey and happiness.

Practitioners Profiles

Listing all the practitioners or at least key practitioners and doctors on the website can attract a lot more prospects than otherwise. This will build a sense of trust and also encourage the visitors and give them confidence. Usually, hospital websites added only a few but the best practice is to add all-important and popular doctors’ and practitioners’ profiles in the website.

Advanced Search Engine

A search engine is a very important part of the user experience, sometime a user might not found the precise information they are seeking on the landing page or home page, so they use the in-built search engine. These days smart search engine are very popular which also provide suggestive search functionality, and breadcrumbs, various filters and such features which can help and improve the search experience.

Contact Book

That is a very useful feature but most hospitals in Dubai, UAE don’t pay much attention to it. It can directly increase a lot of leads and conversions. The Contact Book should include the contact details and office numbers for various sections/departments, doctors, testing facilities, and all other departments which can provide pre-sale support to the patients and prospects.

Social Media Integration

These days’ social media is a very important aspect of marketing. Having a dedicated social media widget that can list feeds from social media accounts and other social media activities can be very helpful in building a good brand image. The social media sharing functionality is also very helpful in promoting your hospital. Such features could generate a lot of free traffic from various social media platforms and help your website SEO (search engine optimization).

News and Announcements

News and announcements are almost an essential component of any business website, especially for hospital websites, this feature is very important. It can provide updates and the latest news which attract visitors and also help your website in terms of SEO. The news and announcement section should be designed separately with the attention of high readability in mind.

Hospital Blog

The blog is a very popular marketing tool for any local or regional business. It could help to generate more traffic and the blog also provides very useful information to your patients and visitors. Which increases patient engagement and helps in building a good brand reputation. Blogs are also a great tool to generate free organic traffic and help with brand awareness campaigns. It is crucial that all the information published on such blogs are authentic and verified.

Hospital Web Design Trend No. 5: Responsive and Mobile First Designs

Here in UAE, almost 90% of the new websites are created on responsive platforms. Earlier there were two separate versions of the website for mobile support, one version was a full version for the desktop/laptop and regular computers and the second version was a mobile site for smartphones and mobile devices. This was not a good practice and it deteriorates the user experience, so responsive designs gain popularity and were equally appreciated by the businesses and the users. A responsive design is a web design that has the ability to detect the screen size and device from where it is being accessed and then rearrange and render different design elements in a way to present everything on a small screen without compromising on user experience and user journey. The responsive web designs are capable of maintaining the same user experience and user journey on both traditional computers/laptops and smartphones and tablets.

The responsive web designs got so much better response from the audiences that businesses started developing mobile-first web designs. A mobile-first web design is a design that is prepared by keeping in mind the mobile users and smartphones as a primary target and then the design is also prepared in a way that it looks good on traditional computers/laptops. As in UAE almost everyone has access to high-speed internet and everyone owns at least one smartphone, so smartphone searches are far more than the regular searches from traditional computers/laptops. Although the mobile-first web designs are a bit trickier and require more professional skills to ensure ultimate user experience and user journey, still they are gaining popularity and we are expecting the mobile-first web designs to surpass the traditional web designs very soon.

Hospital Web Design Trend No. 6: SEO Friendly

SEO or search engine optimization is an extremely important part of any digital marketing strategy. In today’s digital revolution a business can’t survive if they don’t work on their digital marketing. SEO is the core of any digital marketing strategy. It is an estimation that at every second there are almost 64 Million inquiries searched in Google which is the most dominant search engine in the world. This makes it extremely important that your website stands out in search engines. Basically, whenever someone searches anything in Google search, Google scans the website matches the search query with the website content, and then returns the results. That result page is called SERP, or Search Engine Result Page. SEO not only generates free organic website traffic but also affects a brand’s reputation and identity. People tend to trust websites more than what appears in the first few results of the SERP.

There are so many things that influence the performance of a website in the search engine, however, there are certain elements that are directly related to the web design. When we say SEO Friendly websites, we mean the web designs which support the search engine. Actually, the search engine scans a web page then picks up key points and keywords or phrases, and then indexes the page in its SERP. There are so many other factors that also play an important role, but all those factors are meaningless if your website is not readable for the search engine. So, it is crucial that a web design is built on a technology that allows the search engines to read the content of the webpage. The content in Animations, 3Ds, Images, and Videos is not visible for the search engine, apart from that the content which is poorly managed from the source code also perform poorly in the search engine. That is why we always prefer a search engine-friendly website or a web design which supports SEO.

Conclusion

Here in Dubai and all around the UAE the web designing trends change very quickly, businesses keep updating their websites on regular basis, some upgrade the website after each quarter, some once in a year, and so on. For the hospital and healthcare sector, the websites are contributing a lot to overall profitability and revenue generation. The hospital website has been visited more often than any other business type. Since the user experience and user, behavior has been changed since 2020 due to the pandemic and the year 2021 is more focused on the digital and online user experience. These days the website designing market is more inclined towards intense graphics, visual effects, 3D, animations, videos, and multimedia content, etc. However, for a hospital, the user experience is slightly different. The visitors and users of the hospital websites prefer to read more comparing to other industries, which is why a simple design could perform much better than any other modern type of web design.

The content of the website is prepared to appeal to your audience, all the relevant information should be provided but avoid additional details and extra content. The user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) are very important to convert prospects into leads. A hospital website should also include above mentioned features and functionalities to improve the user experience. Along with all that a responsive web design or a mobile-friendly web design is also necessary. SEO or search engine optimization is a great source of free organic traffic which helps to build your brand reputation and improve customer trust and confidence. If you want to upgrade your hospital website or want to revamp an existing website, feel free to reach us out through our Contact Us page or leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get in touch with you soon.

Check out this: Website Trends for School in 2021

The post Website Trends for Hospitals in 2021 appeared first on Web Design Dubai Blog Service.