There are two primary schools of thought on the construction of your website.  The first is the use of a website template and the other is the use of a completely custom website design.  Both, invariably, have their own pros and cons for use when constructing a website for your dental practice. Today we will discuss these pros and cons to help you make a more informed decision.

Dental Website Templates

Simply put, a dental website template is a mass-produced “shell” or “frame” of a website. The framework has been completed, the images have been created, and the dental practice is simply meant to fill in the blanks with a few details about their practice like their name, address, specialties and perhaps a paragraph or two of text. Each dentist who uses the template gets the same “shell” or “frame” and it’s only a few details that differ from one dentist using the template to the next.

No matter how many times the template is used by different dentists, it will always have the same look and feel, all the way down to the exact same images and markup code.  So not only is what your potential customers see exactly the same as your competition, but what they don’t see is as well.

- They’re cheap. Dental website templates are inexpensive when compared to most custom design solutions.

- It’s easy to get started. Simply select from the list of templates and color schemes available and choose the one that you like best or think is somewhat close to your practice’s image.

- They’re somewhat easy to use for the layman. Changing text may not require a designer, though changing text sizing and styles most likely will.

-  They’re low quality. The quality of the initial design itself, in order to keep costs low and reach the broadest range of customers possible, is of a lesser quality and aims for the lowest common denominator. With more and more internet savvy patients out there, the lower quality design will be noticeable by most of your site’s visitors.

-  Low end or “free” stock imagery is used. Rather than photographs of your staff or offices, or anything unique to your practice, a template site will use cheap or free stock photographs which patients may find on other sites as well.

-  The look never changes. You could have the same exact website as your competitor down the street. To the average patient looking to the web to find a dentist this is noticeable and can greatly detract from their willingness to contact you. The first rule of marketing is making your business different from your competitors, setting yourself apart. A cookie-cutter website based on a template makes your practice look like any number of other dentists out there.

-  No expert advice. Even if you find a template from a source that you feel you can trust, there will be nobody involved in your site’s conception and development to offer you their knowledge or experience. Building your site with a professional web designer or web design team will mean that your input and opinions will be compiled into an effective and aesthetically pleasing website whether you’re an amateur artist or can’t match your socks.

- Flawed Code. Because these sites need to be mass produced and made easy to use for most laymen, the actual code of the website is cluttered with extraneous elements like tables and font tags – a custom website will be built with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to ensure the best possible web experience for your site’s visitors.

-  NOT Search Engine Friendly. Because of the design of most dental website templates with their extraneous code, an exuberant amount of flash and non web friendly bloated imagery, you lose out on the ability to potentially rank on the better, more trafficked, keywords and phrases that patients are using to find a dentist in your area.

-  Image Changes can be expensive. Because often times the source files and code is held by the website template designer, changing images to add text, such as your dental practices name or logo, can cost a great deal as you either have to go to the source of the template or have each image recreated from scratch.

-  Lower Conversions. Due to the low quality of the design, low end imagery, and lack of personal touch in the website often times you will find that template websites have a much lower conversion rate. This means that of the total visitors to your site, fewer and fewer of them are following up by contacting you and becoming new patients. This is especially critical as your website should be a primary source of new patients into your office each month.

Custom Dental Website Design

A custom website is essentially the exact opposite of a website template. With a custom website you will let a professional website designer know what you’re looking for and what your practice is like and they will build from scratch a custom website specifically for your dental practice. It will be wholly yours, unlike templates that are owned by someone else.

- Set Yourself Apart. Your website will be completely custom. You won’t find another dentist with a site quite like it.  Your website will reflect your practice through and through.

- Higher Conversions. A professional dental website designer will know how to create a website that converts the most number of patients visiting your site into new leads. Custom designs can EASILY convert 5x or more the number of patients that a website template can.

- Inherently Search Engine Friendly. Again a professional designer will create a site using the latest in search engine friendly design tactics and quick load times. Google themselves recently came out and proved what many SEO’s had been saying, that load times count towards your sites ability to rank.

- Optimized Code. Your website, when built by a professional custom design firm (such as pro dental web design) will use optimized code to enhance search engine friendliness and patient usability.

- Browser Compatibility. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Safari are all different web browsers that your patients will use to visit your website. The problem is each browser requires different code for your dental website to be displayed properly to your patient depending on which browser they are using. With a custom website this is all worked out and tested by your web designer so that your website is compliant between the latest 2 browser revisions. I.E. Internet Explorer 7 and 8, and among all the browsers available to web users.

- Add the pages that you want and need. Unlike a template where each page, no matter the content, will look exactly the same, with a custom website your designer can customize individual pages to your exact needs. For example cosmetic dentistry will have a different look and feel, such as great smiles, than a page about sleep dentistry which may use custom images of people gently sleeping.

-  Cost. The cost, of course, will be higher than a website template. Some templates can go for as little as $300 setup. No good designer could touch that for a top to bottom design.

-  Time. Again, it will take more time to develop a new custom design than a template that is near ready to go. However most designers are able to streamline the process.

If you’re just looking to put “something” up then a website template might be a way for you to go. However, if you’re looking to use the internet as a primary marketing source (which you should be since up to 90% of your local market that is looking for a dentist is doing so online) then a custom website design is the answer for you.

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