How to improve your practice website: a checklist

Say what you treat, who for and where

A visitor should know within a few seconds whether they are in the right place. Most practice websites make them work too hard for it.

Look at the top of your home page on a phone. Does it say what you do, who you help and where you are? "Welcome to our clinic" says none of those. "Sports and musculoskeletal physiotherapy in Harrogate, with evening appointments" says all three, and it helps Google too.

• Lead with the patient's problem, not your history or your credentials. Qualifications matter, but further down the page.
• Use the words patients use. People search for "back pain" and "anxiety counselling", not "musculoskeletal dysfunction" or "integrative psychotherapeutic approaches".
• Show your fees, or at least a starting price. Some patients who can't find a price leave rather than ask.
• Say what happens at a first appointment. It removes a lot of hesitation, especially for therapy and counselling.
• Cut anything that is no longer true: practitioners who have left, treatments you stopped offering, old opening hours.

Make booking take one tap

Every extra step between "I'd like to book" and a confirmed appointment loses some people. On a phone, it loses more.

• Put a Book button in the header so it is visible on every page, and make it go straight to your booking system rather than a contact page.
• If you don't take online bookings, make the phone number tappable and say when you answer it.
• Keep enquiry forms short: name, contact details and a brief message. If you ask about symptoms or medical history, you are collecting health data, which needs secure handling under UK GDPR. It is usually better collected in your practice management system.
• Say how quickly you reply, and then do it.
• If patients can self-refer, say so. Many people assume they need a GP referral for physio, osteopathy or counselling, and never enquire.
• Test your own form once a month. A form that quietly stops arriving is easy to miss and can cost you weeks of enquiries.

How to improve page load speed and mobile use

Most people will see your site on a phone, often on a patchy connection. Run your home page and your most important service page through Google's free PageSpeed Insights. It reports on the Core Web Vitals, and Google's guidance counts a page as good when the main content loads within 2.5 seconds, it responds to a tap within 200 milliseconds and the layout doesn't jump around as it loads.

The usual fixes on a practice site are simple:

• Shrink your images. A photo straight off a phone or a stock site can be several megabytes. Resize and compress it before uploading.
• Use fewer of them. A big rotating slideshow at the top of the page is slow and few people look past the first slide.
• Remove apps and plugins you don't use. Each one adds code to every page.
• Avoid autoplay video on the home page, especially on mobile.
• Check tap targets and text size. Buttons should be easy to press with a thumb, and text readable without zooming.

Then do the simplest test of all: open your site on your own phone, away from wifi, and try to book.

Show patients they are in safe hands

People choosing a practitioner are often anxious, in pain or both. Before they book, they look for signs that you are qualified, real and trusted by others.

• Registration and memberships. Your regulator and registration number (HCPC, GDC, GOsC, GCC, NMC) or your professional body (BACP, UKCP, BANT, CNHC), with a link where you can.
• Real photographs. You, your team and your rooms. A stock photo of a smiling stranger tells a patient nothing.
• Practitioner profiles. Who they are, what they specialise in and what they are like to see.
• Google reviews. Show them on the site and keep collecting them. Our guide on how to get more Google reviews covers how to ask without it feeling awkward.
• Careful testimonials. The ASA expects testimonials to be genuine, with evidence on file, and says a testimonial can't stand in for evidence when it makes an objective claim about results. "I felt listened to" is fine. "Cured my migraines" needs more than a happy patient.
• Your CQC rating, if you are CQC registered. You are required to display it on your website.

How to improve your website ranking in Google

For most practices, better rankings come from two things: a page for each service people search for, and a properly set up local presence.

Give every main service its own page

One page listing ten treatments rarely ranks for any of them. A page each for sports massage, back pain and post-surgical rehab can each rank on their own. Each page should say what the treatment is, who it helps, what happens, what it costs and how to book, with the service and your town in the page title and main heading. Our guide on how to add keywords to your website shows how to do this without stuffing.

Get local SEO right

• Fill in every section of your Google Business Profile, including services, hours, photos and a booking link
• Keep your practice name, address and phone number identical across your site, your profile and every directory
• List yourself in your professional body's directory and the main health directories for your field
• Link your service pages to each other where it helps a reader

If your site isn't appearing at all, start with our guide to why a website isn't showing on Google, which covers indexing problems before rankings.

How to use AI to improve your website

AI tools can save you hours on a website, as long as you treat what they produce as a first draft and stay responsible for every word.

Where it helps

• Drafting service pages from your own notes. Give it the questions patients ask you and your answers, and ask for a plain-English draft. Then rewrite it in your own voice.
• Simplifying jargon. Paste in a paragraph and ask for a version a nervous first-time patient would understand.
• Finding gaps. Ask it to read a page as a patient would and list the questions it leaves unanswered.
• Image descriptions. Drafting alt text for your photos, which helps accessibility and search.

Where to be careful

• Health claims. AI tools state things confidently that aren't true. Google's guidance points out that they predict likely words rather than retrieve facts. Check every claim about a treatment yourself.
• Mass-produced pages. Generating dozens of near-identical pages for every town nearby can breach Google's spam policies. A few genuinely useful pages beat fifty thin ones.
• Patient information. Never paste anything that identifies a patient into a general AI tool.

Being found in AI search

Some patients now ask ChatGPT or Google's AI answers for recommendations. The same things help there: clear facts about what you do and where, consistent details across the web, and reviews. Our explainer on GEO, or being found in AI search, goes further, and you can run a free AI visibility check to see whether your practice shows up.

A simple order to work through

1. Rewrite the top of your home page so it says what, who and where
2. Put a Book button in the header and test your forms
3. Run PageSpeed Insights and fix your largest images
4. Add your registration details, real photos and reviews
5. Write a separate page for your two or three most important services
6. Complete your Google Business Profile
7. Review the whole site every few months, and use AI to help you draft, never to publish unchecked