These are the mistakes we check first when a clinic asks us for healthcare website design. Each one sends patients to a competitor, and most can be fixed without a rebuild.
Trust mistakes
- Stock photos instead of practitioners. "If they hide their team — what else are they hiding?" Real photos always win.
- No practitioner pages. Patients book a person, not a sign: photo, specialism, experience.
- "Call for prices". Opacity reads as "expensive". The patient left to compare and didn't come back.
- Reviews without names or dates. Anonymous "Thanks, all great!" works against you.
- No address or map in sight. A local business without a location is a red flag.
Conversion mistakes
- No online booking. A large share of calls land out of hours. A "we'll call back" form doesn't fix it: younger patients don't call.
- A booking button you have to hunt for. It belongs on every screen, not just the header.
- An 8-field form. Name and phone — that's all a first contact needs.
- One "Services" list page. Each service needs its own page with a price and a practitioner. Otherwise neither patients nor Google find it.
- Popups and carousels. "−30% off implants!" in the first 3 seconds — this is healthcare, not a clearance.
Technical and SEO mistakes
- Slow loading. Past 2 seconds on mobile, part of your patients are already back in the results.
- A clumsy mobile version. 70%+ of clinic traffic is on phones. A desktop site squeezed into a phone doesn't count.
- No Schema.org markup. Without MedicalOrganization, Google shows no rich snippets — competitors look richer in the results.
- A site untouched for years. 2022 prices and three-year-old "news" kill trust.
- No analytics. Without Search Console and GA4 you don't know where patients come from or what's broken.
What to do about it
The good news: most of the list is fixable without a rebuild — booking, forms, markup and speed can be fixed on an existing site, as long as it isn't on a builder. The bad news: on a builder or an old template, half the list is technically impossible — then it's more honest to price a new clinic website.