Dental website questions patients ask before calling

For your trade 6 min read

Nobody calls a dental practice casually. Here are the eight things a person settles on your website first, and what happens when a page will not say.

Nobody calls a dental practice for fun. The person on your website has either been putting this off for a while, or something has started hurting, and in both cases they are looking for reasons to close the tab. Every question your site refuses to answer is one they now have to ask a receptionist out loud, and a fair number of them would rather not.

Say whether you are taking new patients

This is the first thing a stranger wants settled, it decides whether they bother calling at all, and it is usually nowhere on the page.

Someone new to the area assumes the answer is no, because they have been turned away before. If you are open to new patients, say it in plain words near the top: taking new patients, adults and children, from this month. If you are not, say that too, and say when you expect to be, and offer a waiting list. A clear no this week keeps somebody who will call in March.

If the answer changes with your schedule, that line has to change with it. A page that says you are open to new patients when you have been full since spring produces angry phone calls and nothing else.

Name the insurance you take

Not "most major plans accepted". Names, in a list.

A person holding a card with an insurer's name on it is doing a matching exercise, and if they cannot find their insurer in your words they assume you are not an option. It takes them four seconds to check a list and it takes a phone call and a hold queue to check a vague sentence. Most people will not make the call.

Say what you do about people with no insurance as well. If you have a payment plan, describe it in one sentence. If you do not, say that the exam is paid for on the day and what that costs. Silence here reads as expensive.

Put a number on the first appointment

You cannot price a treatment plan for a mouth you have not seen, and nobody expects you to. What they expect, and are rarely given, is the price of walking through the door.

Put the cost of a new patient exam on the page, along with whether x-rays are included and what a hygiene appointment costs. Then add the sentence that actually settles the nerves: that if anything further is needed, they will be given a written plan with the costs on it before any work is booked, and that they can take it away and think about it.

What people fear more than the price is being in a chair, reclined, with somebody describing work they have not agreed to and no idea what it will come to. One paragraph removes it.

Describe what a first appointment involves

Write out the visit. Twenty minutes, arrive ten early the first time, you will fill in a medical history, the dentist will look at your teeth and gums, you may have x-rays, you will get told what is going on and what the options are, nothing will be done to you on the day unless you ask for it.

That last clause is the one that matters to someone who has not been in six years. People stay away because they imagine a first visit ending in a drill. Telling them it does not is honest and it is the whole difference between a booking and a browse.

The nervous patient reads every word

Plenty of the people on your website are frightened, and they have usually been made to feel foolish about it before.

Say what you do about it, specifically. That you will stop the moment a hand goes up. That you will talk them through it first if they want, or not at all if they would rather not know. That a first appointment can be a conversation with nothing in their mouth. That there is no lecture about how long it has been, from anybody in the building.

Do not promise that it will be painless, because that is not a promise anybody can keep and the reader knows it. Describe what you actually do.

Toothache today, and what you can honestly do

Somebody in real pain is searching at seven in the morning or eleven at night, and they need one specific piece of information: whether you can see them today.

Give them the rule rather than a sentiment. Call before nine and you will be seen the same day where possible. Call after that and here is what happens. On a weekend or out of hours, here is the number to use instead, even though it is not yours.

Sending somebody to the right place at midnight costs you nothing and is remembered. A page of reassurance with no phone number is what they will remember instead.

Say who they will be sitting in front of

Not credentials in a wall of letters. A photograph that looks like the actual person, how long they have been practicing, and one line of what they do most.

Add whether the practice is one you can see the same dentist at each time. That is a question people care about a great deal more than the equipment you bought last year, and almost no practice website answers it.

If you have a particular strength, say it plainly. Good with children. Good with people who have not been in ten years. Emergency slots held back every morning. Whatever is true.

Handle the forms before they arrive

Medical history forms on a clipboard in a waiting room are the least pleasant part of a first visit and the easiest to move.

Put the form on the site as something that can be filled in on a phone and emailed to the practice, or at minimum as a printable page. Say how long it takes and that bringing it completed means arriving five minutes early rather than fifteen.

Whatever route you use, check once a month that it still arrives. Forms fail silently. A form that stopped arriving after a hosting change looks exactly like a quiet month from your side.

A short checklist

• Whether you are taking new patients, in the first screen, kept current
• Insurers named in a list, not "most plans accepted"
• The price of a new patient exam and a hygiene appointment
• A written plan before any treatment, said in one sentence
• What a first appointment involves, step by step
• What you do for nervous patients, in specifics
• Same-day rules for toothache, plus an out-of-hours number that is not yours
• Medical history form fillable before arrival, tested this month

Questions people ask

Should a dental website list prices

List the entry prices, being the exam and the hygiene appointment, and explain that treatment is quoted in writing after an examination. Full price lists for treatment are optional; the door price is not.

How do I say I am taking new patients

In plain words near the top of the home page, with the month on it. Take it down the day you stop, and put a waiting list form in its place.

What should be at the top of a dental practice home page

Whether you are taking new patients, the phone number, and the insurers you take. Everything else on the page can wait until those three are settled.

Do patients read the dentist's biography page

They read the photograph and the first line. Long qualification lists get skipped. Whether they will see the same dentist each visit is the detail most often wanted and least often given.

How should a practice website handle emergencies

Say what time to call by for a same-day slot, and give the out-of-hours number to call when you are shut, even though it sends them elsewhere.

Is a contact form enough for new patient inquiries

Only alongside a phone number, and only if you test that the form still arrives. Many people will call rather than type, particularly if something is hurting.