The Smallest Click Can Cost You Patients

When we market medical spas with digital marketing strategies, we usually look at the bigger picture. This could range from a product you’re trying to sell, a treatment you’re promoting, new before and after photos, or even an ad campaign driving people to the website. While those are all important to drive traffic to your site, sometimes something much smaller, like the buttons used on your website, headlines, colors, or even where information is placed is the deciding factor of whether or not that visitor books an appointment.

In “Digital Design Drives User Behavior,” Shlomo Benartzi and Saurabh Bhargava provide insight into how digital design influences consumer decision making. Their research shows that consumers’ purchasing decisions may be influenced by the design of the website in ways that consumers don’t realize. For example, researchers made very slight modifications to an online enrollment webpage. They changed the color scheme of the page, simplified the language used, and moved the most important information to places where it would be easily visible. The results indicated a 15% increase in personally tailored enrollments.

That principle works relatively well when it comes to medspa marketing. A potential patient has most likely researched and gained interest in Botox, dermal fillers, weight loss treatments, or some other service before visiting a medspa’s website. Therefore, once a patient visits a medspa’s website, the site should help them in making the decision to schedule a consultation easy and obvious. For example, changing a vague button from “Learn More” to “Schedule Your Consultation,” moving pricing information to areas where patients can easily access it, or even decreasing the number of steps required to request a consultation are examples of design choices that can impact whether a patient follows through with scheduling a consultation.

Having a beautiful website is important, especially in an industry where aesthetics influence credibility. However, having a beautiful website doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s effective or functional. Each component of the website should serve a purpose. Therefore, if a medspa treatment page is meant to get people to request a consultation, the website should easily guide visitors towards taking that action instead of having them search for what to do next.

While small design elements may not seem as important on their own, they define how customers interact with a business as a whole. In medspa marketing, potential patients are usually comparing several providers that are offering very similar treatments. Each bit of confusion or hesitation can become a competitive advantage. This means that having a good design isn’t about aesthetics or making something look better, it’s about making the next steps easier for your potential patient.

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