Optometry Marketing
Hold onto your armrests, folks! There’s some big changes coming with websites.
If you’ve recently updated your website, then this article might give you some useful tips to use to stay on the edge.
If your website is more than three years old, it might be time you had a redesign. Let me explain why.
Why your smartphone has forced the internet to mature
In the early 2000’s, it was enough to have some basic practice information on the web. All you had to do was list a few details about your practice, take a few photos and click ‘Save’.
Since then, the number of websites has increased over 5000% to over 850 million websites. [Internetlivestats.com comparing year 2000 (17087182 sites) to 2015 (863105652 sites)].
The offshoot of this is that your patients are being bombarded by more information daily. More people to listen to, more views to take into account, and more reviews to weigh up.
In May 2015, Google stated that Smartphones have overtaken desktops/laptops as the dominant source of search traffic. Part of this is due to the ease of use.
Isn’t your phone within arm’s reach at the moment? Whereas the laptop or desktop may be in another room. Perhaps being used by someone else. Or hidden underneath some tax documents. (Is it nearly that time of year again?)
None of us like to wait on mobile. We want quick search results on Google. We want to race to receive the crown of a well-researched spouse/parent/buyer. (See my previous article on this race.)
A great article is just around the corner
Let’s say that you find an awesome article. Then click….
As the seconds slip past, you start to wonder why it’s taking so long. Still no response….
You decide to wait a couple more seconds (you’re feeling generous with your time at the moment).
The page never loads….
How frustrating is that?
Why does great content suffer behind internet bottlenecks? (Or maybe you’re with Telstra, Australia’s AT&T equivalent, when the data and phone went down for millions of customers for several hours.)
Web pages slowed down with gradual introduction of new features and ways to monetize them.
Then Google stepped in.
Working with New York Times, Huffington Post, Twitter, Pinterest and over forty others, Google led the formation of the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project. The single goal of this project is to make web pages load nearly instantly on mobile.
Fast web pages are good for everyone. They’re good for us, as consumers. We don’t have to waste time waiting for pages to load. We’re far more likely to read to the end of an article. This is good for the pages we visit. And it’s good for Google, since we’re more likely to come back and search again.
And did you know that AMP is free? (If you have a WordPress website, all it takes is a few minutes to get everything running.)
If you post updates to your site news regularly, this news is big for you. A small background tweak can get your content soaring. Not only on Google Search Results, but also on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and a number of other sites. Consider Google AMP like doing your followers a favour. You’re making it heaps quicker for them to load your articles. And it doesn’t cost you anything.
If you don’t have a blog, patients may be reading articles from others. (I chatted to a Neurologist with dry eye recently, who said that he gets most of his information from dry eye sites in the USA. The Neurologist hadn’t heard about Intense Pulsed Light Treatment (IPL) & Meibomian Gland Expression.) Check out this article on Why You Should Blog.
Previously, Google punished websites that didn’t work well on mobile. They slipped down a few pegs on the search results pages.
Now, Google is coming to lend a hand, for the benefit of all.
And so, Mobile has matured the internet.
(In case you’re wondering, this article was published with Google AMP.)
If you know of any colleagues or friends who are interested in updating their website or coming up with a social media strategy, please forward this website to them. Thanks a bunch!
