The visual aspects of your dental website potentially holds a greater influence on a new visitor to your site. It is not just about grabbing the attention or arousing the curiosity of a visitor. It is more about impacting their thought processes favorably and getting them to take desirable action.
Directing Attention
The average online visitor is used to the idea of seeing very effective visuals, and if your website does not offer them the same visual experience, it can impair their engagement with your site more than anything else. A picture or a video can say more than a thousand words, and it can help the visitor understand your core message far more effectively.
Therefore, a key part of your site design and content strategy should be to direct the visual attention of your target audience to those areas of your website that you want them to notice. Visual cueing is one of the important aspects of visual attention.
Visual Cueing
Visualizers often use visual cueing as a strategy to direct the visitors’ gazes in the desired areas. This can be achieved by using attractive colors or textual directors, but perhaps the most effective way is to use shapes. The arrow is the most popular and time-tested shape when it comes to visual cueing.
The “arrow” could be an actual arrow, or simply a triangle shape designed to provide direction. Sometimes adding simple arrows or triangles in images and graphics on your site can result in a substantial jump in the number of visitors scrolling down to the bottom of a webpage.
More importantly, such visitors who spend more time on the webpage and view the areas that you want them to see, will have a higher chance of getting converted or taking action that you want them to. Therefore, maintaining and directing the visual attention of your site readers is going to pay off considerably over time.
Greater Credibility
When choosing images for your website, you should try to include images of real people. These people could be patients, doctors, staff members or others associated with your dental practice. Adding such images will improve the credibility of your website and provide it with a stronger personality.
By: Naren Arulrajah with Vikas Vij
About the Author:
Naren Arulrajah is President and CEO of Ekwa Marketing, a complete Internet marketing company which focuses on SEO, social media, marketing education and the online reputations of Dentists.
With a team of 130+ full time marketers, www.ekwa.com helps doctors who know where they want to go, get there by dominating their market and growing their business significantly year after year. If you have questions about marketing your practice online, call Naren direct at 877-249-9666.
