Common mistakes in solo specialist and medical clinic websites.

Landing into pop-ups, sticky banners, three CTAs in the hero, a chat bubble, a cookie banner, and a panel that slides in eight seconds after the page loads is overwhelming. Patients try to find where you are, what you treat, whether you have an appointment available, and if you're open. Show them those four things in a scannable format and you're 80% of the way there.

Remember that people on phones don't read; they scan, then tap.

So less is more. Try to cut out as much as possible until the only things left are what 80% of visitors actually came for. Move the rest one click deep. If you can't decide what to cut, ask what you'd put on a printed business card.

Wordpress websites and generic templates do okay on phone, but often they aren't tested enough.

What it looks like: text overflows boxes or overlaps other text, buttons too small to tap, a menu that needs two hands, forms that zoom on focus and never zoom back. A map that spills off the screen.

To test: open the site on your own phone, in landscape and portrait. If you wouldn't book on it as a patient, neither will they. If you're on a desktop or laptop, you can use developer tools to do this.

A generic site with scaffolded boxes and rigid text doesn't do it like it used to in 2010.

Patients judge a clinic by its website the same way they judge a clinic by its waiting room. Outdated design reads as outdated practice, even when the medicine inside is excellent.

You don't need a redesign every two years. You just need something that looks modern, and provides information in a clean and concise way.

Patients want to be treated by humans. They also want to know who's treating them, which means a bio matters.

Medical professionals often have extensive experience and want to highlight all of it as a differentiating factor. The problem is that when someone looks at the site and sees a wall of text, they just don't read it. Writing paragraphs upon paragraphs of training experience, fellowships, where you did your internship and where you work is almost as bad as no bio at all, people just don't read it.

Lead with what you treat, then who you treat, then your training. Two short paragraphs. Put other experience, fellowships etc. into chip rows of credentials, or clean tables that people can scan easily.

Patients want to be treated by humans. They'd rather see pictures of the team and the clinic. Stock photos look cheap and unprofessional.

It signals that the site was built by someone checking a box. Trust drops before the page finishes loading.

Search engines also reward originality, and stock images send the opposite signal. Get a photographer for half a day, or even just use your phone. Real photos of your team, your rooms, your reception. It's one of the cheapest credibility levers you can pull.

A fair few patients show up already looking to book. They want to know when you're open and how to book. Hiding the button on the contact page, or burying it in a hamburger menu, makes them work for the privilege of giving you money.

What it looks like: 'Book online' as the third item under 'Contact,' or a button that opens a generic enquiry form that takes 48 hours to reply to.

Put the booking button in the top-right of every page, visible without scrolling, and next to your opening times, in a colour that doesn't blend into the navigation. If a patient on any page is more than one tap from booking, the site is leaking.