Welcome Back to The Dish, Practice Cafe’s Newsletter!
This is The Dish, your weekly digest providing actionable insights on how to maximize your dental marketing dollars. Each week, we send out short and sweet treats to help you navigate the obstacles our clients are facing in real-time.
Evaluating Potential Website Partners
A dental practice’s website is not only a critical component of the brand but also an important piece of its marketing engine that goes a long way in determining the outcome of digital marketing campaigns. As a result, the decision on a website partner will be equally critical. Today, we’re outlining three things to keep in mind when evaluating potential website partners.
Do You Own the Website?
This seems like a no-brainer but it can be a nuanced discussion sometimes. The easiest way to approach this conversation is to confirm you’ll own both the design and content of the website. There are a few circumstances where the marketing agency may own the design and content and you’ll pay a monthly licensing fee for the site. In other circumstances, you may own the design and not the content. The important thing is to gain clarity on your ownership (or lack thereof) of the website.
Utility of the Content Management System
A content management system (CMS) is software designed to help users build websites while providing an easy platform to make content updates on the site. The most popular CMS, and the CMS Practice Cafe builds their websites on, is WordPress. WordPress powers nearly 45% of all websites on the internet.
The CMS is an important consideration when evaluating website partners due to third-party access to the site. Let’s say you own your website and content and would like to have a new partner start up an SEO campaign to improve organic search results. For your SEO partner to drive value, they’ll need full access to your website to make content updates and the technical adjustments necessary to improve organic search positioning. If your website is built on a proprietary CMS or is a hard-coded site, it significantly inhibits your SEO partner’s ability to generate results due to restricted access. Proprietary CMS website builders typically restrict website access to only their internal employees.
Takeaway: Ask your potential website partner what level of access third parties can have to your website.
Search Conversion Rates
The primary purpose of a website is to convert search traffic into qualified leads. Analyzing search conversion rate data during the evaluation process is valuable if the potential partner has it available. If a dental website is converting less than 7% of search traffic, that might be a red flag worth looking into. A dental website with a 12-20%+ search conversion rate is generally high-performing.
Need More Help?
If you need a new website or are currently evaluating potential partners, we’d love an opportunity to show what sets us apart!
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