HTML v WordPress Dental Websites

IS WORDPRESS RIGHT FOR YOU?

Before making a decision on whether you think WordPress is the ideal website platform to present your dental practice, make sure you have understood the difference between a conventional HTML website verses a WordPress website. To help you make the right choice, I have written below the pro’s and con’s for each platform. At design4dentists we build all kinds of dental websites using various coded languages and having experienced all aspects of functionality, reliability, speed and efficiencies, we think it is important to share our knowledge with you.
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1. TEMPLATE OR CUSTOMISATION?

WordPress is now a very popular website platform for all businesses, organisations and individuals. It is used worldwide and offers a great solution to building a website online with relative ease. However, WordPress uses an online management system which has to be used with pre-structured template designs. Many of these templates are free to use but there are more adventurous templates which are available to purchase. This means the designer or dental marketing company is limited in creativity as they will have to conform to the set-up of the template they choose. The result is that your dental website may end up looking similar to nearly 30% of other websites on the internet. Ask yourself whether your dental brand deserves to appear more individual?
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2. FLEXIBLE WEBSITE DESIGN

HTML is far more flexible than WordPress when it comes to designing a bespoke dental website which needs to match your brand look and feel. HTML coding is the most widely used website language and can accommodate all kinds of functionality even if they are coded in a different language. An experienced website designer can build a coded HTML website far quicker than a WordPress website and one that will appear far different than a typical template design. Ask your dental marketing company or web designer what there abilities are in creating websites. You need a website that will truly represent your brand, accommodate all your treatments and provide a great patient experience.
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3. UPDATING YOUR WEBSITE

The main benefits of a WordPress website is that it uses an online customer management system. This is a free tool which controls the make-up of your website. It allows the user online access to change the content of the website anywhere in the world (as long as they have internet access). Dentists can make their own updates to their dental website anytime they wish. The system does require basic training and the dentist needs to have a keen eye for design however, using the management system helps reduce the cost of employing a design agency each time you wish to make changes to your website.

The process of carrying out website updates can be very slow when using the management system. You may find that your time is best spent elsewhere in the dental practice. An experienced website designer can make changes far quicker in HTML than using any content managed website system. Alterations that may take an hour in WordPress can be carried out in half the time using HTML. Find out which website maintenance package your web designer or dental marketing company can offer you and one that will be suitable for your requirements. You may realise that the changes to may wish to make on your website will be minimal throughout the year and it will not be worth having a WordPress website.
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4. FUNCTIONS & PLUGINS

These days many websites use animated effects and can be instructed to carry out lots of different tasks. There are payment portals, form action scripts, moving imagery to name a few and all of which are available for various website platforms. WordPress uses plugin tools and many of these are free to access online which add extra functionality to your pre-built template design. There are some excellent plugins designed by specialist WordPress coders which are available for purchase and your dental website designer can advise you of your options which suit the style of your website. The downside of using lots of plugins is that it can slow your WordPress website down and when WordPress updates its systems, some of your plugins may fail to operate. This often happens without you knowing. It is therefore important that you choose a monthly maintenance plan with your dental marketing company who will ensure your website is functioning as it should.
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5. HOW ABOUT DENTAL SEO?

WordPress was originally built as a blogging tool and not for use as a website presentation. Once the dental SEO (search engine optimisation) implementation has been set-up, it can take twice as long to carry out SEO updates and technical changes. Each page has to be accessed individually within its management system. With HTML websites, if designed and built to be efficient, can be optimised for the search engines far quicker resulting in dental SEO fee’s being almost half the cost in some cases.
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PROFESSIONAL DENTAL WEBSITE DESIGN & SEO MARKETING
For more information call Alex Nicolaou on 01923 609770 to find out more about making the most of your dental website and generating a great return on your online investments.
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