How Much Does a Dental Office Website Cost?

We’ve already established that there is a broad range of prices for a website.  For this section we will assume that you are looking for a 15 page website.  The site structure could look something like this:

• Home (an overview of your services)
• About (overview of your practice)
  • Team (all of the people that work for you)
  • About You (profile of you)
  • Testimonials
• First Visit
• Services
  • Dental Checkups and Cleanings
  • Orthodontics
  • Dental Implants
  • Crowns and Bridges
  • Porcelain Veneers
  • Root Canals
  • Dentures
• Contact

Why the Significant Variation?

We know that $3,500-10,000 is a pretty big variation in cost.  Here’s some of the factors that impact the variation:

• The quality of the design.
• Whether the website is custom designed.
• The amount of design work. For example, the home page may have a lot of design work done on it, but the inside pages may have minimal design work.
• How well it’s developed (the coding and details, including mobile responsiveness).
• How well the Search Engine Optimization has been incorporated into your website.

We are breaking down for you all of the factors that are part of a website.  This can help you determine whether you want them to be a part of your website or not.

Costs for websites vary based on a lot of factors.  The foundations of a good website should be:

• Designed to look great and professionally represent your practice
• Custom designed for your practice
• Well developed, working well with mobile devices and good page speed
• Solid Search Engine Optimization incorporated into the copy and the development of the website in order to help you rank better with Google

As we’ve already give above, the range for a 15-page website should be around 3,500-10,000.  A 3,500 website should be good.  An 10,000 website should be better, both in design and development.

You Can Do It For Cheaper… If You Want

Of course, if you want a cheaper website, you can do it by yourself, but then the quality of the site design suffers.  The quality of your website makes a statement about your practice.  If it’s a poor quality website, it could be making a statement about you and your practice that you don’t like.

Another way you can reduce the cost is to reduce the number of pages too, but here’s the problem: it makes it harder to properly represent the services you offer.  Additionally, you will sacrifice some of your ability to rank on Google.  For example, if you don’t have a page on tooth extractions, you are less likely to be ranked well on Google for tooth extractions.

Moving Forward: Consider What You Want

Consider what you want your website to look like.  Look at your peers and websites outside of your industry.  Make a list of the websites you like the most.

You need to consider what you want your website to look like, including the style of your home page and inside pages.  You also need to consider what are the main services that you offer.  You want to have your new website present them in a way that’s easy to understand.

Make a list of the services you offer.  Highlight your top 3-6 most important services.

Many of the following items will likely not be included in a base web design pricing (with the exception of development).  These are services that may help you better achieve the business goals of your practice.

Photography

In the very least, you should have photos of the dentists.  It’s normal practice to have photos of each team member too.  Now, while you don’t have to get professional photographs for your website, but it’s probably a good idea.  They almost always look much better, giving a better impression of you and your practice.

Make sure that the photos that are taken at photos that can work well for a website.  Elevate99 has a handy guide to help ensure that your photographer can provide you with the photos you want for your website.

Photography can cost $1,000-4,000

Copywriting

Some dentists might think that they can use some standard text that can just be copied into their website.  Here’s the problem.  Google searches for duplicate copy.  If Google finds duplicate copy, they will penalize your rankings.  That means the traffic to your website will decrease, impacting your flow of new patients.  (If you want to check and see if your present website has duplicate copy, use a service like Copyscape).

We don’t recommend using copying content from someone else’s website or using stock copy.  Write new copy yourself or get someone else to do it for you.

The cost of your copy will depend on four factors:

• The number of pages written
• The amount of words per page
• Whether there is any SEO strategy done for the pages
• The quality of the copy that’s written and any strategy for marketing or conversion

Quality Copy Costs More and Delivers More

More expensive copy should be better written.  Better writing is more engaging, creates more trust and gets you want you want – it is better at getting people to schedule an appointment with your practice.  Additionally, Google pays attention to the quality of your writing – and that will impact significantly on your Google ranking.

The amount of copy per page we normally recommend is 400-1,000 words.  There are many reasons that we include this amount of copywriting per page.

• People don’t read, they skim. And that means that you need to have content that they can skim over.  Using various techniques, we make it so that people can skim your content easily.  And if they are interested after skimming, they will go back and read more of the text.  You need to give them enough text to read.
• People believe that there’s something valuable able having lots of copy vs very little. But remember the rule – there’s no such thing as too much copy, only bad copy.  If you are going to have a lot of copy, make it goo.
• Google also believes that there’s value in volume. One of the ranking factors for Google is the amount of copy that’s been written.  Having around 800 words or more is a recognized factor in helping your rank on Google.
• Having a lot of copy allows keywords to be seeded naturally.
• Having a lot of copy means people can spend more time on your page. And Google likes to see that people are spending a lot of time on any given page.

If you want to write copy yourself, you can.  Alternatively, you can find a firm (like Elevate99) that can write it for you.  We are happy to help either way.

The estimated cost you should be paying for 15 pages of copywriting: $2,000-6,000.

1. Know what you want to accomplish. Do you want 2-3 more patients a month? Or are you looking to grow the number of patients by 10 or 20 or more a month? What else is important to accomplish.
2. Determine a budget range that works for you.
3. Get a website that is professionally designed.
4. Determine what other services are needed to help you accomplish your business goals.
5. Measure the success of your efforts.
6. Determine what you need to continue doing, what needs to be improved and if anything needs to be dropped.