PRACTICE in BRIEF • Creating a Practice Website Is One Way of Promoting a Dental Practice
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PRACTICE IN BRIEF • Creating a practice website is one way of promoting a dental practice. • Clear steps in the process of creating a practice website are explained. • The services offered by different website design companies are compared. 6 Creating a practice website P. K. Downes1 A website is a window to the outside world. For a dental practice, it may be the fi rst point of contact for a prospective new patient and will therefore provide them with their ‘fi rst impression’; this may be days or weeks before actually visiting the practice. This section considers the different ways of creating a dental practice website and lists some of the main dental website design companies. It also describes what factors make a successful website and offers advice on how to ensure that it complies with current regulations and recommendations. WHAT IS A WEBSITE? THE INTERNET GUIDE FOR HTML DENTISTRY A website can be anything from a single web All web pages are written using the same computer page of text to the $2.5 million all-singing, 1. An introduction to the Internet language, hypertext markup language (HTML). HTML all-dancing multimedia experience of IBM’s has evolved from the printing industry. HTML started 2. Connecting to the Internet showpiece ‘Eternal Egypt’.1 What they have as a simple form of tagging or formatting text, and has developed to include commands for integrating the 3. Introduction to email in common is that they are written in HTML multimedia and interactive elements found on many 4. Effective use of email (or one of its variants), are stored on a web web pages. HTML instructs your web browser how the server and are viewed over the Internet by a text and graphics should appear (eg bold, italic, font 5. Introduction to the web browser. size, centred etc) as the page is downloaded onto your World Wide Web computer. Figure 1 shows a simple example of what 6. Creating a practice website WHY CREATE A PRACTICE WEBSITE? a ‘raw’ HTML web page looks like, and Figure 2 shows how it would appear when viewed by a web browser. 7. Power searching There are many different reasons for creating The importance of HTML is the fact that it is not 8. Dental resources on a practice website, the most common reason system-dependent; this means that your web browser the Internet being to promote the services of the practice. will be able to view any page written in HTML no matter what operating system your computer is using 9. Safe and effi cient use of This may be aimed at the practice’s existing (for example, IBM-PC or Apple Macintosh). For a the Internet patient base or it may be more geared towards attracting new patients. Your website could be good grounding in using HTML, visit w3schools’ 10. Putting it all together; HTML Tutorial.2 dentistry and the Internet a patient’s fi rst experience with the practice. Some sites may want to emphasise patient education, certain dental products or treat- entails a fair bit of work learning about ment philosophies. Online appointment book- HTML and multimedia presentation. The ing has also become a popular service. But good news is that there are thousands of 1General Dental Practitioner, Kelvin House remember that the web is a ‘pull’ medium as sites on the web that have been designed Dental Practice, 2 Nelson Road, Whitsta- opposed to a ‘push’ medium; people still have to guide you through this process, most ble, Kent, CT5 1DP Correspondence to: Dr Paul K. Downes to actively seek out your site. of them written by educational establish- Email: [email protected] ments. There is a wide range of software DO-IT-YOURSELF OR OUTSOURCE? which can be used to write web pages: Refereed Paper There are four main ways of creating a • Notepad (this text editor comes bundled © British Dental Journal 2007; 202: 597-604 practice web site: with Windows and is all you need to write DOI: 10.1038/bdj.2007.424 1. Write the site from scratch yourself. This simple pages in HTML) BRITISH DENTAL JOURNAL VOLUME 202 NO. 10 MAY 26 2007 597 © 2007 Nature Publishing Group PRACTICE Fig. 1 HTML code written in Note- pad (the colours have been added <HTML> simply to highlight the different <HEAD> sets of tags). Notice that most <TITLE>A Really Basic Document</TITLE> of the tags are in pairs, with the </HEAD> second command turning off the <BODY BGCOLOR="#87ceff"> tag. It can be saved as a web page <HI> by using the fi le extension .html This is a really <B>basic</B>document instead of .txt <BR> It contains a link to the <A HREF="http://www.gdc-uk.org/">General Dental Council</A>website </HI> </BODY> </HTML> Fig. 2 How the HTML code in Fig- ure 1 would appear as a web page when viewed in Internet Explorer • Word (which will ‘translate’ most straight- SiteMaker software for free for 14 days. It is forward Word documents into HTML docu- also excellent value for money; the lite ver- ments with a moderate degree of success) sion costs £26.99 a year and allows you to • Free or non-expensive authoring pro- create one web site with an unlimited number grams, such as AceHTML Freeware,3 of pages, up to a maximum of 40MB. I have Coffee Cup’s HTML Code/Visual Editor4 created a demonstration site8 which, using ($49) or NetObjects Fusion5 ($200). Some existing text and images, took about 90 programs concentrate on the HTML code minutes to create behind the design while others are more 3. Use a dental website design company to like desktop publishing software and keep build a site for you based upon a selection the code out of sight of different designs. They would also nor- • Professional authoring packages, such as mally fi nd you a suitable domain name and Macromedia’s Dreamweaver6 will do eve- host the site for you. Minor text updates are rything very well, but has a steep learning often included in the package (see Table 1 curve (and costs almost £400). for details) 4. Use a web design company to produce a 2. Use a website content management service bespoke website from scratch. If you require to create your own simple site online. One a unique look to your website with the very drawback is the lack of templates suitable latest technological ‘bells and whistles’ then for a dental practice. Many of the Ameri- this may be the best option. Prices will vary can sites have designs that are very out- enormously depending on your require- dated. A UK site that has excellent templates ments (see Table 1 for details). A computer that can easily be adjusted for dental use student wanting to supplement his/her uni- is MoonFruit7 (Fig. 3). You can trial the versity grant may well charge less than a 598 BRITISH DENTAL JOURNAL VOLUME 202 NO. 10 MAY 26 2007 © 2007 Nature Publishing Group PRACTICE Table 1 This table shows details of the services provided by various website design companies who create sites for dental practices. Information was taken from each company’s website and was correct on 16th March 2007 Number Dental website design company of style Features Costs templates Up to fi ve pages £611 package includes the Can add your own logo fi rst year’s hosting and to the template Admor two free email addresses 3 Will help in writing copy http://www.admor.co.uk/ £25 for two years domain Includes one free change name registration per month £216 per year for hosting. Search engine registration. Up to seven pages £250 set up fee Scanning & image £300 per year for hosting, manipulation of photos domain name and Dental Community 6 maintenance http://www.dentalcommunity.co.uk/ Unlimited updates to the Dental Team page Unlimited email addresses Unlimited minor text Extra pages are £75-£90 changes. each. Links to many examples of their work can be found on their website Prices on application Offer a content manage- Dental Design Limited Bespoke Website management ment system (CMS) for http://www.dental-design.co.uk/ service and search engine people who want to optimisation are charged update their own site at £50 per month. Offer many Internet marketing strategies. Links to many examples of their work can be found on Dental-Focus Bespoke their website Prices on application. http://www.dental-focus.com/ service Offer many Internet marketing strategies. £620 per year for Includes choice of 12 comprehensive website (up animated introductions to 35 pages), hosting and Assistance with adding domain name registration photos for co.uk. and .com Practice Box (Dentsure Ltd) 9 Subscriber makes text £255 per year for budget http://www.practicebox.com/ changes themselves website (up to seven Search engine optimisation pages), hosting and Free poster and leafl ets to co.uk domain promote website. Also offer a bespoke design service. Service limited to Wrigley Free, but Wrigley Orbit OHA members advert on every page and PracticeGenie from Wrigley Hosted on the Wrigley Orbit often mentioned in No details (Dentsure Ltd) PracticeGenie server, the patient advice pages available therefore web address http://www.practicegenie.com/index.php Can upgrade the site would be similar to for £99, £299 and £499 www.practicegenie.com/ per year. sites/12345. Various interactive The Internet Marketing Company CMS £195 activation fee and features available aimed at http://www.theinternetmarketingco.com service monthly fee from £25. UK small businesses. professional web design company, but at the the thing you bought was incapable of doing end of the day, you get what you pay for.