Requirements and planning (This page)
Optimizing
Validating
In Part 1 of this guide, we discussed the critical role a website plays in a clinic’s online presence, the importance of trust, SEO, compliance, and overall strategy. Now, in Part 2, we move into the practical side: setting clear technical and design objectives that will guide the website’s creation. By defining these goals early, we ensure the finished site is not only visually appealing, but also secure, optimized, and fully aligned with the needs of both the clinic and its patients.
When building a clean, high-quality website for a healthcare institution, it’s critical to define clear objectives from the start and carefully explore the available options for achieving them. Our primary goals include:
Trustworthy Visuals and Layout: Develop a clean, professional design that immediately inspires trust, competence, and care.
Educational Blogging: Create and maintain a blog focused on providing relevant, patient-centered medical information, helping both with SEO and public education.
On-Site SEO Excellence: Implement best practices for on-page SEO, including clear headings, optimized images, structured data, and fast page loading.
Legal and Regulatory Compliance: Ensure full compliance with both general web regulations (e.g., privacy laws, accessibility standards) and country-specific medical practice regulations.
Contact and Appointment Tools: Provide easy, secure tools for potential patients to reach the clinic, request appointments, or submit inquiries.
Integrated Social Media Presence: Offer seamless navigation to official social media profiles, ensuring consistent branding, contact details, and messaging across all platforms.
Review Management Resources: Include guidance and encouragement for patients to leave positive reviews, helping to build a strong online reputation.
There are countless tools, frameworks, and platforms available for building websites today. In this guide, rather than reviewing every option, I will focus on what I recommend specifically for clinic websites based on performance, SEO, and long-term flexibility.
At the base level, websites today typically fall into two major categories:
Single-Page Applications (SPAs): Sites built with technologies like React, where the browser dynamically loads content in the background without reloading full pages.
Traditional Multi-Page Websites: Sites where each page is rendered on the server and delivered fully to the browser.
For our purposes, where SEO, clarity, and trust are critical, the traditional multi-page approach is the better choice. SPAs can introduce SEO challenges unless countermeasures like server-side rendering (SSR) are implemented — and even then, it often adds unnecessary complexity for a clinic’s needs.
Assuming we agree on that foundation, our website will consist primarily of two types of content:
Static pages (such as the homepage, legal pages, physician credentials, and contact pages)
Blog posts (to regularly publish patient-centered educational material)
When it comes to blogging, the dominant platform today is WordPress. It’s free, widely supported, and backed by a massive ecosystem of themes and plugins. Beyond blogging, WordPress can also handle static pages, offering a complete site solution. However, it's important to note that WordPress is quite opinionated in its structure. While customization is possible through child themes and plugin development, doing so often requires technical skill, and even minor design tweaks can become a large undertaking.
This presents a choice:
WordPress offers easy, non-technical blogging, but can restrict the flexibility and precision needed for static page design.
My recommendation is to use both approaches strategically:
Deploy WordPress solely for the blog section (for example, under /blog/ or /patient-education/),
while building the core static pages separately using a lightweight
theming method. Personally, I prefer using PHP
includes for flexible and manageable templates, but other
methods, such as static site generators like Hugo or Jekyll, could work
equally well depending on your team's preferences and hosting environment.
This hybrid approach provides the best of both worlds:
Easy content publishing through WordPress
Maximum design freedom and SEO control for the main site
Conclusion
In all cases, the technology should serve the clinic's goals — not force the clinic to adapt to the technology. Simplicity, reliability, and patient trust must stay at the heart of every technical decision.
When designing a clinic's website, navigation must prioritize simplicity, clarity, and ease of access — especially for mobile users. Given that the majority of visitors will access the site from mobile devices, a mobile-first approach is not optional; it is essential. This means that all design decisions, including menus, buttons, page layouts, and interaction flows, should be optimized first for smaller screens and touch input, then expanded for desktop users.
From a navigation structure standpoint, fewer, clearer options are better. Overly complex menus confuse users and dilute SEO signals. Each primary service, department, or area of expertise should have its own dedicated, easily accessible page. The main navigation should highlight core actions visitors are likely seeking — such as learning about the clinic, reading about services, contacting the clinic, or booking an appointment.
SEO considerations are deeply tied to navigation:
Internal linking must be logical and strategic. Important pages should not be buried several layers deep; ideally, every major page should be accessible within two or three clicks from the homepage.
Descriptive anchor text (not generic links like "click here") helps search engines understand the relationships between pages.
Sitemap clarity: a clear, organized navigation hierarchy improves both the human experience and assists search engine crawlers in indexing the website correctly.
Finally, ensure that all menu elements are easily tappable on mobile, meet accessibility standards (such as proper color contrast and font size), and gracefully degrade if JavaScript is disabled. Navigation is not just a UX concern; it directly impacts rankings, discoverability, and ultimately patient trust.
"To summarize key points, here’s a quick checklist to guide your navigation design:"
✅ Design navigation mobile-first: prioritize easy access on small screens.
✅ Keep the main menu simple and focused — no overwhelming dropdowns.
✅ Ensure every important page is reachable within 2–3 clicks from the homepage.
✅ Use descriptive link text (e.g., "Our GI Services" instead of "Click here").
✅ Maintain logical internal linking between related pages.
✅ Ensure tap targets (buttons, links) are large enough for easy use on mobile.
✅ Use clear, consistent labels for services and sections.
✅ Build a dynamic XML sitemap and submit it to search engines.
✅ Check that navigation is fully accessible (contrast, font size, screen-reader compatibility).