Squarespace for Health Websites – 9 Things You Need to Know
When you run a healthcare organization, a website is essential for telling prospective clients about the services you offer, the areas you operate in, and how to get in touch.
If you’re considering a website platform for your organization, Squarespace is a brilliant choice. It’s easy to use, comes with a range of features, and means you can create professionally designed pages in minutes.
So, what do you need to bear in mind when using Squarespace for health websites? Let’s take a look at nine of the most important factors.
Want to know more about using Squarespace for your business, law firm, school site, or non-profit? Check out our comprehensive guides!
1. Pick the Right Plan
Before using Squarespace for your health website, it’s essential to choose the right pricing plan.
Unless you want to sell products and services online, we recommend the Business Plan. This provides you with advanced analytics and additional features – for example, you can add custom code to enhance your site.
Alt text: Squarespace pricing tiers
We also recommend paying in advance for the year. Not only can you save 30% on your Squarespace health website, but you can also get additional features like a free domain name and a free year of Google Workspace.
2. Ensure Your Site is SEO-Optimized
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of ensuring your health website ranks as high as possible in Google for specific words and phrases. The first three organic results in Google get nearly 70% of all the clicks, so the higher you rank, the better!
Squarespace is great for SEO. You can integrate Google Search Console to see which keywords you’re ranking for, and your content is automatically marked up to provide the search engines with additional context.
3. Remember to be HIPAA-compliant
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is concerned with the protection of people’s medical records and health information. If you handle the data of US citizens, you have to comply.
Is Squarespace HIPAA compliant? While Squarespace isn’t designed to be HIPAA compliant, Squarespace Scheduling, which you can use to book appointments, does meet HIPAA Security Rule requirements.
4. Use Simple, Jargon-Free Language
Are you aware that half of US adults read at a 6th-grade level or lower? While using complex medical terminology on your website might be tempting, it’s best to keep things simple and straightforward.
If you’re struggling, Squarespace’s AI feature lets you rewrite existing text to make it simpler, although, of course, we recommend checking your copy for accuracy before using it.
5. Choose the Right Template for Your Needs
When you’re in the healthcare profession, you need to convey a sense of professionalism. A low-quality, poorly-presented website may mean prospective customers quickly leave!
As part of your subscription, you can access over 150 professionally-designed Squarespace templates. There are even Squarespace healthcare templates created specifically for health organizations.
Here’s a great Squarespace therapist template we love. Clove uses soft colors and has lots of space for photos. You can even include a “meet the team” section on your home page to build trust in your services.
6. Make it as Easy as Possible for Customers to Reach Out
It’s essential to make sure the contact details on your website are as clear and easy to find as possible.
Firstly, this helps with trust and credibility – it shows you’re a legitimate organization. Secondly, prospective and existing clients can reach out however they want.
Think about all the different ways you want customers to be able to contact you, whether that’s by email, phone, SMS, or face-to-face. Squarespace Scheduling makes it easy for customers to book an appointment to speak to you on their terms, even outside of working hours.
7. Ensure Your Site is Accessible to Everyone
Did you know that 13% of the US population is disabled? This means it’s essential to make sure your website is as easy to use as possible.
We’ve already talked about using simple language. Other ways you can make your Squarespace health website accessible include:
Adding captions to videos
Adding relevant, contextual alt text to images
Avoiding flashing images and backgrounds
Squarespace makes it easy to make your site ADA compliant, for example, being able to alt text to your images when you upload them.
8. Ensure Your Content is Trustworthy and Credible
Have you heard of E-E-A-T? This acronym is short for “Experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.” These are the criteria Google uses to assess pages – the more credible your content, the more likely you are to rank.
How can you show that your healthcare content is trustworthy and genuine? Regularly update your site, highlight your experience and expertise, and link to credible and relevant sources.
9. Build a Community
Our final thing to be aware of when building a Squarespace health website?
Make your site a community, a place where individuals facing similar health issues can share experiences and encourage one another. This also helps you gain valuable insight into how you can support patients and help them make lifestyle changes.
Squarespace offers membership site functionality, which you can use to send email updates, facilitate group workshops, and even offer online courses.
Studio Elias: The Perfect Partner for Your Squarespace Health Website
As you can see, Squarespace is an excellent choice for healthcare professionals, including therapists, dieticians, chiropractors, and physiotherapists!
Need a little extra help getting your health website up and running? Our Squarespace development packages are perfect for you. We’ll build a custom website for your organization, optimize your content, and ensure your healthcare site looks right across all standard devices.
Get in touch today, and take the first step towards a stunning health website, crafted in Squarespace.
