Andy’s article from the VBJ

Posted 02 September 2009 in

Squire Creative’s Andy Cole has recently had an article published in the Veterinary Business Journal. Andy has been exploring the use that vets in the UK are making of the internet and how they can get more from their websites.

Read on for the full article.

HUGE POTENTIAL OF WEB GOES UNREALISED

With the majority of the UK population now online, websites and digital marketing are fast becoming the most important tools for companies looking to grow their business. The “TripAdvisor” mindset of consumers now means that customers like to compare and contrast before committing to purchase.  This applies to vet practices as much as it does to hotels, laptops and car insurance.  Yet a recent survey conducted by Squire Creative shows that many vets are still not using the online channel to its full potential.

A sample of vet websites in the south west was surveyed using a scoring system based on questions focussing on four categories:

• Getting the basics right
• Meeting business objectives
• Brand and product communication
• Use of technology

The results highlighted trends across the sample and provided a useful insight into the current veterinary website landscape. 

Getting the basics right

Websites need to be functional, usable and accessible, and there are certain must-have elements that should be present on the homepage.  The questions in this category related to current standards amongst veterinary websites and how they measure up to best practice. Issues such as web conventions (e.g. making the site’s logo a link back to the homepage), navigation (e.g. links changing colour after they have been visited), accessibility (e.g. how the site design is affected when the font size is increased) and homepage content were all covered.

Surprisingly, very few vet practices managed to score highly.  The average for this category was 63%.  This suggested that the surveyed sites are getting some of the basics right, but there is a lack of appreciation of what is good website practice.  If applied, these protocols can make it so much easier for the user of the site, which must be good news for the vet practice.

The standards that govern the creation and maintenance of a website are constantly evolving. It seems the majority of vets surveyed are struggling to keep up-to-date with this.  Of course, there will always be internal time and resource pressures to factor in, but an appreciation of the basics of good website design would add value to the customer/practice relationship.

Meeting Business Objectives

To meet the business objectives of any website, it’s essential that the audience can find the site in the first place.  Unsurprisingly, this is has been termed “findability” – otherwise known as search engine visibility. 

Once the audience has arrived at the site, it’s then important to listen to what they have to say – it’s often the users of a site that provide the best practical ideas for improvement. 

So this part of the survey looked into the findability of the sites and the availability of interactive elements once on them – i.e. feedback and enquiry tools.

None of the sites surveyed within this category managed to attain full marks, with the overall average coming out at 50%.  The majority of the sites had 50 or more pages indexed by Google and were therefore reasonably easy to find.  However, only 1 site had over 5 links from other websites into it.  This suggests that there is a missed opportunity for vet practice sites to communicate with their audience, as it is relatively easy to ensure links to the site are presented on any number of local information sites.  And having more links helps with the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) process. 

Search engines also like user-friendly or meaningful URLs – e.g. http://www.ABCvet.co.uk  - and a positive result was that most of the sites surveyed had these.

However, only a very small percentage of the sites offered a feedback facility, allowing users to feedback any comments – whether positive or negative.  This represents yet another lost opportunity as feedback forms are very simple to add to a website, and user views can be practical, useful and, best of all, free.

The main conclusion here? There is a great deal of scope for vets to harness the marketing opportunities of an improved Google ranking.  A more “findable” site will almost certainly have more people visiting it.  Then once on the site, it is important for vets to employ more user-centred content and functionality.  Site users are becoming more and more web literate and expect tools which allow them to feedback.  Providing these tools is simple to do and will have measurable benefits for both the audience and the vet alike.

Brand and Product Communication

If a consumer wants to find out about a product or service a company offers, one of the first ports of call will be that company’s website.  So it is absolutely vital that the “feel” of a vet’s website reflects the values and the atmosphere of the practice and its people.  It must engage the emotions of its audience, provide reassurance and reflect a professional approach. It may well be the first impression a customer will get of your practice.

The questions in this category referred to the more subjective elements of the survey.  They centred on subjects such as messaging, imagery, feel (e.g. consistent colour, font and graphical elements) and communication of services. 

This was the highest scoring category with the average score being 80% - a good result for the majority of the sites.  Most of the sites did put across clear messaging in terms of the services offered, and some of them differentiated themselves by creating an online brand.  Yet there is still a lot of room for vets to start using their websites to create a strong, differentiated brand personality – to set them apart from other practices.  For example, only around half the vets surveyed used images which accurately reflected the customer experience when they visit the practice.  This kind of imagery can make the vet seem more personal and certainly more friendly – which is exactly what animal owners want when they are choosing their vet practice.

Although this area was the most subjective in the survey, it is still possible to conclude that vets do have difficulty in expressing a sense of their own individuality.  Messages and images can be used to develop an online brand personality.  This is very influential in ensuring a visitor to your website becomes a visitor to your practice.

Use of Technology

The use of emerging technologies is not necessarily a pre-requisite of an effective website, but the past few years have shown appropriate use of new web tools can be extremely valuable for users.  The rule of thumb is there is no point in using a new technology unless it can add useful functionality and content to the site. 

The technologies considered in the survey were:

• RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds – This allows vets to publish information such as news and activities into the RSS feed, and the users who have subscribed to the feed can view this information without having to go to the vet’s website.  Therefore, these users are always updated when a piece of news is posted
• Blogging – A blog can offer regular news and opinion, and can communicate and encourage debate on a vet’s website.  It can be argued that the commitment to maintaining a regular blog, and the threat of encouraging negative comment precludes their presence from many sites,  but if a blog is done well by a senior member of the practice team, it can be of great benefit to that practice
• Multimedia (videos, podcasts, virtual tours) – This kind of content is consumed by the vast majority of web users.  However, should it be used in the context of a vet website, it is important that it reinforces the credibility of the site and does not compromise the quality of the static content.
• Tagging important pages - The facility for visitors to tag pages of a practice website is simple to implement and increases the distribution of the content.  On top of this, it shows the practice as progressive and committed to embracing technology of the benefit of its customers.

Disappointingly, none of the sites surveyed embraced these new technologies. The score was a very poor 0%.  This could be down to a lack of resource, a lack of expertise, or maybe a lack of appreciation of the direction in which the internet is progressing.  However, these are areas that vets could be exploring. Those vets who clearly grasp the communicative power of their website to influence their audiences, as well as enhance their reputation, give themselves the opportunity to make their practice stand out from the crowd.

Conclusion
A vet’s website is the first place a potential customer will look before making their animal healthcare decision.  So it needs to be right.  Vets have to ensure that their sites are attractive, functional, up-to-date and convey their practice’s brand.  Vets need to come up with more strategic and forward-thinking ways of engaging their customers and their prospects – and their website is at the frontline.  There is a huge amount of potential out there for vets to create a better web presence, and for those who do so, increased revenues will surely follow.

For a complimentary copy of the full survey, please email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)