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software.com Dentist's Website Proposal
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Also attached is a page of tech-talk that discusses the website hosting features you will have. We outsource this function to take advantage of the large investment and well-deserved, excellent reputation of one of the best web hosting vendors in the market. Essentially, the package price quoted here will include domain registration and domain hosting for two years with more than enough computer power to do the job. Finally, the mocked up dummy pages on our site let you see the general look and feel that we will be using. Of course, the pages will need "a few changes" and the header of the page should include a graphic that we will have to produce for the purpose, but the mock-ups will give you the general idea. Accepting payments online is an option for you to consider. As part of this website, we can offer customers the ability to pay online using their credit card. We will let PayPal work collections, card processing, etc. PayPal does, of course, charge a percentage for handling this-at low volumes, 2.9% + $.30/transaction. (Note that credit card processing rates on the web are higher than for brick-and-mortar stores.) But on the positive side, letting them take on the bill-collection part of this equation can take quite a load off your office, thus making the percentage attractive. It is also a helpful service for your customers and many of them will appreciate it. In addition, if you setup with PayPal to accept payments, you may want to consider selling gift certificates. We will be glad to discuss this with you and it will add cost to the website. Still, if you are doing lots of cosmetic dental work, it may be something you need to consider...teeth whitening as a birthday or Christmas gift! Yet another option you may want to consider is the actual sale of products to your patients. Examples of what others are doing include the sale of rotary toothbrushes, teeth whiteners, etc. On the positive side, you may be able to make extra money by selling these products. On the negative side, if you elect to do this and have not been doing so before, you will also introduce the necessity for shipping materials and handling that you have never had before. Sales volumes will probably be small, but given the right products, they can be lucrative. The decision on whether to do this is, of course, one you must make, but we will be happy to consult with you and help evaluate the potential if you are interested. Oh, yes, and we should mention to you that the web is not exactly like being in your office where you can judge whether the patient understands what you're saying. Visitors to this website will likely include not only people who have minimal educational backgrounds, especially where anything medical is involved, but also inhabitants of third-world countries who are looking for information to help with problems they and their family members are having--in the complete absence of any dental help. We mention these two points because what may seem all too ovbious to you to worry about may not be obvious to your potential patients at all, let alone to those poor third-world website visitors...how far you go with providing information is up to you. Preliminary SurveyJust so you'll know, when you contract with us to do a website, the first thing we will do is what we call a preliminary survey. We will go on the web and try to check out your online competition as well as what can be used for a domain name. (The domain name is your website name, e.g., IHSsoftware.com is our domain name. You may rest assured that the most obvious domain names are taken already so you may have to work to come up with something you'll really like.) There are other things to consider in selecting a domain name, and we will point these out as we give you two or three viable options to select from. While performing this survey, we will also survey the key words that will be used to get you good placement on the search engines. The entire website will be built with these words in mind so that people can find you amongst the one-billion-plus websites that now exist on the world-wide-web. Because the entire website will be designed around the things we learn in this survey, this initial step is extremely important to your eventual website. That is why we felt it necessary to mention it here.
Proposed Website Pages1. "Emergency!" PageThis page will give the patient instructions on how to contact your office, your answering service/machine/home number, and what to do if they cannot get you. In addition, it will offer them a link to emergency information via our patient-information pages. This page alone is something you will want to ask all your patients to take a look at--it is a valuable service you will be offering them.
A word of caution is in order, too. It is quite possible to build a home page that is really "cool" or "flashy" but that search engines will never find. We will not do this without explaining it to you before we do it. Remember, the entire purpose of the website is to make money--not to look "cool" or "flashy." Please, look at the mocked-up websites to get an idea of what we recommend as a home page. These pages represent samples that will do all of the things the site needs to do. If you deviate too far from what we have shown there, be sure you know the long-term search-engine reprecussions before you do it.
3. "About Us" PageShowing the same menu as the home page, the data here will always be divided into at least three sections:
4. "Contact Us" Page/Make An AppointmentActually two pages-one for "Make An Appointment" and one for existing patients to simply email the office (if you wish). The former is a data-collection page asking the prospective patient for pertinent information as enumerated below. At the top of this page will be a disclaimer saying that no diagnosis work will be done via email and that only those wishing to make an appointment to see the doctor should use the page. When the user sends the information gathered by this page, it will be automatically emailed to someone in the doctor's office. The proposed options for this will offer to allow the user to make a "consultation visit," an "office visit," "cleaning visit," or a "follow-up visit" appointment. Others will be easy to add. If free "meet the dentist" consultations are offered, that can also be an option here. Data collected for prospective patients will include the following items:
The "Contact Us" page will have the same disclaimer as the "Make An Appointment" page, but will only get the user's name, phone number, and email address. The user will be allowed to enter comments so that they can ask billing questions, etc., using email. When the user sends the information gathered by this page, it will be automatically emailed to someone in the doctor's office.
5. "Procedures Performed" PageThe main purpose of this page is to offer the visitor a menu of any special procedure-information that can be performed as outlined below. In addition, this page will offer the visitor a link to our "patient information" pages so that they can find the information they want on a multitude of subjects. The menu will offer the buttons shown below for the visitor to select. There will be a page(s) for each of these procedure categories as elaborated anon.
6. "Location Information" PageThe main purpose of this page is to offer the visitor a small menu as shown below. In addition, this page will offer the user a set of driving instructions to the doctor's office as well as repeating the address information, phone, and FAX. "Printer-friendly" pages will need to be offered as well so that the prospective patient can quickly and easily print the information and use it to get to you and your immediate area. The page menu options will include:
There will be four page(s) showing the indicated information reached by clicking these menus options. The purpose here is not only to help your patients, it is also to help professional visitors who might be coming to your office--just refer them to the website for lots of the information they'll need.
7. "General FAQ's" PageThis page will offer answers to frequently-asked questions of a general nature. "Why do I need to come every 6 months?" "I hate flossing, do I have to do it?" "What are your office hours?" (Yes, we know it is elsewhere, but answer it again here--trust us.) "How long does having my teeth cleaned take?" Ask your telephone-answering office folks what they get sick of being asked and include those Q/A sequences.
8. "Insurance Plans Accepted" PageThis page will give the visitor a notice that some cosmetic work is not covered under most insurance plans and ask the potential patient to contact their insurance company before assuming that a desired procedure will be covered. If desired, the notice can be made as to whether the doctor's office will file for the patient. A listing of accepted plans will be shown and, if one or two of the plans represent substantial portions of your business, insurance company telephone numbers can be shown.
9. "Financing Available" PageIf the doctor has made arrangements for financing, this page will elaborate the details for the potential patient. Since there are numerous plans available, your office will need to provide us with the details you want to give your prospective patient on this page and we will format them as part of the page.
10. "Privacy Policy" PageThis page will state the doctor's privacy policy as regards data collected via the website as well as in the office. The website portion is considered as a required statement for any website that collects visitor information.
11. "Employment Opportunities" PageThis page can be a simple, "we're not hiring" or can articulate the details about who you want to hire.
12. "Download Patient Registration Form" PageThis will be a compressed Adobe Acrobat Reader® format file that will allow the new patient to download the forms and fill them out before coming to the office, thus saving both your personnel and the new patient time. Moreover, the patient filling out such forms at their leisure at home can be asked for more information and health history than you might want to try to get in your waiting room.
13. "Patient Information" PageThis page will make your website a valuable resource for your patients. It will offer links to other dental-information websites. You can see what this will look like by clicking on our "Patient Information" page--we feel you'll enjoy what you see there.
14. "Seminars/Events of Interest" PageThis page will offer information about meetings, seminars, etc., the patient may have an interest in attending. Special emphasis will be placed on any seminar or event that features the doctor(s) as a speaker or other participant. This also allows for some mutual listing and "advertising" of events with other groups that might lead to business opportunities, for example, a plastic surgeon.
15. "Procedure 1-n" PagesFirst, let's say that you may not even need any of these pages and they are NOT included in the price we quote here--read on. The primary purpose of these pages is to offer the patient a special description of the procedure in question. The patient information pages we provide will probably give general information from the ADA, CDA, or some other association or source. That means these pages are ones you feel so strongly about that you want to do your own, or ones where you have a special procedure or something new. On these pages, you want to provide the patient with salient, pertinent information in plain English. What are you going to do? What should they expect? How long will it take? Where will you do it? How will you do it? Will it hurt? What about cost? What about afterward? How soon can they eat? How soon can they expect things to be back to normal?Each of these pages will also offer a page on "general pre-operative instructions" (if any) plus a page on "general post-operative instructions" (if any). Each of these pages will begin with the disclaimer that these are general instructions and that any specific instructions they are given are to be followed in lieu of these general instructions. Where they are available and appropriate, "before and after" pictures will be shown on a page that is offered here as well. (E.g., whitening before/after pictures might help encourage the patient. Repaired broken teeth might help the patient's feelings and encourage them to move forward.) Note that if the person is recognizable, you must get a release from them before using any pictures of them on the web. Also, where they are available and appropriate, xrays can be shown to help the patient understand the nature of the problem. The really bad news here--and we always try to tell you up front--is that you will need to write the text for the page and provide the pictures and xrays you want to use. Also, we will have to charge you extra money for each of these "Procedure Pages." The extra amount will vary depending on how long the page is, how many graphics it uses, how many backup pages it needs, etc., so we'll need to discuss these with you and then give you a price quote.
16. "Patients' Comments" PageOn this page we will include patient testimonials and comments to help make potential patients feel encouraged and confident about their trip to the dentist--about their trip to see you. A picture of any willing customer will help, but remember you MUST get a release from them before you can put their picture on the web. We do not recommend putting their names on the web--just initials. If pictures are used, we will keep them fairly small to avoid long download times and you should limit your page to about 6 or 8 testimonials.
17. "Other Sites of Interest" PageThis page is strictly optional and you probably won't need it, but it is available to you. This page will offer the website visitor links to other websites--perhaps a local plastic surgeon's website (someone you are doing mutual referrals with). Whether to have this page is up to you, but you will have to specify what other sites' URL's you want to include so that we don't have to search for them or try to figure them out when the other website uses CGI's, ASP's, etc.
18. "Legal Disclaimer" PageWe consider this page to be a requirement for any medical-professional website. It is simply what it says it is. It tells the customer that a face-to-face visit with the medical professional has no replacement and that any and all information presented on this website, whether written by you or not, is not to be considered as replacing that one-on-one, face-to-face interaction. It advises the site visitor that no warranty, implied, oral, written or otherwise, is implied or given as to the accuracy or appropriateness of the information presented on or through out the website; and that you are not to be held liable for any mistakes or consequences resulting from such mistakes. It also states that by using the website, the visitor is accepting these terms.
19. Questions to be consideredQuestions that may make you want more or fewer pages on your site:
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