Dental website design: Nervous people
booking in advance.
A good part of your audience is putting off the appointment. The site either makes booking easy enough to do while the nerve holds, or it gives them a reason to close the tab.
Booking·Treatments·Fees·GDC
The job
Dental websites have two jobs that pull against each other. They have to reassure somebody anxious, and they have to satisfy a regulator that takes a dim view of claims.
So the copy is careful by design rather than by accident: what a treatment involves, what it costs, who does it and what their registration is. That is what the GDC wants and it happens to be what a nervous patient wants too.
Dental practice website design: The whole list, nothing extra.
Every one of these is in the price. If a job needs something that is not here, it is in the written scope before you say yes, not on the invoice after.
Booking that works at 11pm
Most people decide to sort their teeth out late in the evening. Whether that is a real booking system or a form that reaches reception, it has to work then.
A page per treatment
What it is, what happens, how long, how much it hurts, and how long before you can eat normally. Written plainly, because this is what people actually search.
Fees, published
A band, a range or a from-price, but a number. Practices that publish fees get fewer time-wasting calls, not more.
The clinicians, properly
Names, GDC numbers, what each one does and a photograph that looks like them. Registration details are required and they also happen to reassure.
NHS and private, separated
Two different questions with two different answers, and a site that blurs them wastes everybody’s time including reception’s.
Claims kept inside the guidance
No before-and-after that implies a guarantee, no superlatives that cannot be evidenced. I will say when a sentence is a problem; the practice decides.
Sitemap and page structure
What pages exist, how they relate, and what each one is for. This is where SEO is won or lost, before a line of code.
Design, if there is none
I will design it: a site that looks considered and does the job. If the brand underneath it needs doing too, that is its own piece of work and it has its own page.
Build
From your design or mine, on a platform that suits the team who will keep it running rather than the one I enjoy most.
Real content in
Your words and pictures loaded and laid out, not lorem ipsum with a note to fill it later. If an existing site is being replaced, moving it across is its own job: see website migration.
Accessibility and performance
Keyboard, focus order, contrast and labels checked, not assumed. Core Web Vitals measured on real pages, then fixed.
Launch and handover
A checklist worked through line by line, then documentation and a walkthrough with whoever picks it up.
Sounds like you if
“We have been quoted before and never seen what we were paying for.”
One page
A single scrolling page, £600. A launch, a test, or a business that needs to exist online by Friday.
Five pages
Home, about, services, one more, contact, £1,200. The standard small business site.
On WordPress
The same five pages on WordPress, £1,600. More to build, and more you can change yourself afterwards.
A shop
An online shop starts at £2,000: five content pages, up to twenty-five products, payments, shipping, tax and the policies.
Changes afterwards
£75 an hour, billed after they are done, or a monthly plan if there are enough of them to be worth fixing the price.
What is never extra
The sitemap, the redirects, the accessibility pass and the handover. They are part of the build, not a line added at the end.
Hosting and the certificate
A WordPress site on a managed host on my account, with the security certificate kept renewed, for £50 a month. The domain stays registered in your name.
Updated every month
WordPress, the theme and the plugins brought up to date, then the pages that matter checked by hand.
A backup every day
A fresh backup every day, and another before any update runs, so any change can be undone.
Changes when you need them
A reply within twelve working hours saying what it needs and how long it will take, before any of it is started. £75 an hour, or on a plan.
The note on the 1st
What was updated, what was changed and how many hours were used, next to the invoice.
Leaving, and what you take
A month's notice after the first three months, then a full backup and help moving it, free. The domain is already yours.
Sounds like you if
“The last person built it and then we never heard from them again.”
How a dental website is built: From hello to handover.
Step 1
12 hours max
I reply
Working hours, unless I am on holiday and have said so.
Step 2
Day 0
Scope call
30 minutes. NHS, private or both, which treatments matter, and how booking works today.
Step 3
+2 days
Written scope
The treatment pages, the booking route and the price. Fixed, before anything starts.
Step 4
Build
Booking first
The route from landing on a treatment page to being booked, before anything is styled around it.
Step 5
End
Handed over
Logins, a guide, and whoever updates fees and clinicians shown how.
This is for you
Treatment and fee pages: A dental website is for you
if any of these sound familiar.
- Private patients you want more of
- A phone that rings only in working hours
- Treatment pages that do not exist
- Fees nobody can find
It is not, if
- You want claims the GDC would not allow
- You want reviews written for you
- Nobody can approve clinical wording
Not sure which side you are on? Say so on the call. If I am not the right person, you get the name of someone who is.
What a dental website costs
Every price on the page,
before you call.
You should not have to sit through a call to find out whether you can afford me.
GDC and booking questions: Questions I get every time.
The honest answers. If yours is not here, it is the first thing we cover.
Ask me yours01 Do you know the GDC guidance?
I know what it requires of a website and I build to that: registration details, no misleading claims, and care with before-and-after imagery. I am not a compliance adviser and will not sign anything off. The practice approves the wording.
02 Can patients book online?
Yes, either into a real booking system or through a form that lands with reception in a usable shape. Which one depends on your practice software, and I will tell you what yours allows before you pay for anything.
03 Should we publish our fees?
Yes. Practices worry it drives people away and it mostly does the opposite: it removes the phone call that exists only to ask the price. A band or a from-price is enough.
04 What does dental website design cost?
The same as any build of that size, priced by platform on the website design page. Treatment pages are what usually decide the size.
05 Working with a dental website designer?
You work with one person, start to finish. On clinical wording that matters: the constraint has to be understood rather than passed down a chain, and you get one person to check a sentence with.
06 Can you do the SEO as well?
Yes, and dental search is competitive enough to be its own job: dental SEO covers it.
Usually goes with: Dental websites
and dental SEO.
A practice is found locally or not at all, and the profile and listings are the setup side of that.
See dental SEOOr one of the other three
Phone only ringing
in working hours?
Tell me what your practice does and how booking works today. Thirty minutes, no pitch, and you leave knowing what a dental website would need to change.
- Within 12 hoursA reply
- Within 2 working daysA written scope and a price
- OrThe name of someone who fits better