The relationship between a doctor and their patient is a very personal one. A lot of us bare our most intimate secrets when going to the doctor, hoping to find someone that can help us. A lot of practices forget this when designing their websites. While a professional look is ideal for a medical practice website, sometimes this professionalism is taken too far and you end up with something that looks too cold, too clinical and too impersonal.  What you really need is a website that makes visitors feel comfortable and is able to identify their needs and meet them with targeted content.

Website Personalization
Website personalization is the process through which you create customized unique experiences for every visitor. Instead of a single, broad experience, website personalization allows your practice to present each patient with a unique experience that is tailored to their needs and preferences. With the growing consumerization of healthcare and everchanging consumer expectations, it is important for medical practices to adapt in order to continue offering their patients the best possible experience. People expect a personalize digital experience, they expect the same level of personalization they would receive in an in-person setting, and it is our job to give it to them.

Doing so will bring your practice the following benefits:

• An enhanced experience. One that is more relevant to the individual patient.
• Higher levels of patient engagement.
• A better ROI for marketing.

To personalize your website, you need to know your patients. You need to be aware of the actions every patient performs when they visit your website; doing so will give you valuable insight into their medical needs, preferences and demographics. There are two ways to accomplish this:

• Through surveys and questionnaires.
• Using the data in your medical system.

With this information you will be able to redesign your website to better suit the patients that are visiting it, allowing you to better plan out the experience they receive when they visit.

Keep in mind that the primary objective of your website is to engage patients rather than doctors. To successfully personalize your website for patients you will need to invest a great deal of time and effort, and collect a large amount of patient data. Here are a few simple steps to follow:

Collect Information
The first step is to collect information. You need to know as much about your patients as possible. Not only do you need information on existing patients, you also need it for potential future patients. This will allow you to create a persona of your ideal patient. These are fictional representations that allow you to craft the perfect experience for your website.

Learn More: 6 Crucial Components of Good Medical Website Design

Define Immediate Goals
With patient personas defined, begin setting goals for what kind of personalization approach you want to take. The beauty here is that your goals can be whatever you want; anything from simple lead generation to improved patient engagement. Your goals will also vary based on your location and the demographic of your patient pool. Just having a personalized website will help you meet the goals you set for it. Rather than a website designed for a specific type of patient, you will possess a website capable of adapting top the needs of any patient that visits it.

Testing
Now that your personalized website is live, you can begin the testing phase. This is where you evaluate the changes you have made to your website and judge how well they are performing. Furthermore, you can start making changes, just minor tweaks and adjustments to really hone in on what your visitors react to the best. Regular testing will also help identify mistakes so that they may be fixed.

Measure
Similar to how goals were set before you started the website personalization process, you now have to pick metrics through which you will measure your success. This will help you measure the performance of your personalization campaign and also judge whether or not you are earning back your ROI. This will help you measure whether or not you are meeting the goals you set at the beginning and whether or not you are ready to begin setting new goals. A key part of any personalization effort.