When a potential client comes onto your veterinary website looking for answers, the last thing you want is for them to be immediately sidetracked trying to navigate around. At the same time, it’s often unlikely that you can address every question in a single, short page. Balancing these two needs is a major part of properly building your veterinary website from scratch. And while you could opt for one of those generalized website builders, you’ll likely find yourself trying to force templates to match your clinic’s needs. Below, we’ve pulled together a few tips for creating an easy to navigate veterinary website.
Dropdown Menus
Have you ever been on a website that has a dozen different section titles listed across the top of the homepage? Probably not in the last decade, we hope. Dropdown menus are a great way to effectively organize your veterinary website’s pages. This can include your ‘About Us’ information for multiple doctors, for example. Some clinics have veterinarians with especially strong reputations in the community and want to highlight them. Just remember to avoid nesting too many tabs within tabs on your dropdown menu, as it can be frustrating to use if the cursor slips on or off the page.
Another important use of the dropdown menu is for your services page. (Side note: If you’ve combined all your services onto a single page on your site, stick around for our upcoming series on why that’s a good way to kill your search engine ranking.) Potential clients can use a well-planned dropdown services menu tab to look for exactly what they need -- and in the process get an effective overview of the other services your veterinary clinic or hospital provides. Sure, they may be looking for information on vaccinations or getting their puppy neutered. But in the process, they also see that you offer doggie daycare and grooming.
Effective Naming Schema
For a number of reasons, you’re going to want to use the most straightforward naming schema for your veterinary website pages. Clients appreciate it, and so do search engines like Google. A few rules of thumb include choosing names that your clients (not others in your field) will recognize, making sure the page title isn’t misleading, aiming for shorter names and using titles that your potential client would use. While other veterinarians understand what you mean by ‘Geriatric Cat and Dog Preventative Care,’ it won’t look great to pet owners. ‘Senior Pet Care’ is succinct, understandable and likely a phrase they might enter into a search engine.
Fix Broken Links
This is number one on our list of common problems that need fixing on veterinary websites. If you link to outside resources, such as the AAHA or pet insurance websites, you need to make sure to have those checked periodically to make sure they still work. The same goes for internal links. If you link to your surgery page for more information inside your spay and neuter page, any changes you make to your veterinary website could create a broken link down the road.
If you have any questions about how to make your veterinary website easy to navigate, we’re always here to help!