Tips to Add Personality to Your Dental Website

Your dental practice has a personality, but does your website reflect your practice’s unique personality? Or is your website a dull carbon copy of other dental websites on the web?

Here’s why the answer to this question matters:

Long before they ever step foot in your practice and even before they speak to your receptionist to schedule an appointment, your prospective patient will first meet your website. 

Your website will give prospective patients an immediate impression of your dental practice. Make sure it’s the right impression. 

In this post, we’ll discuss how to give off the right impression of your dental practice through your website. Let’s get started.

Why is Personality Important in Dental Web Design?

Your web design is important because, in most instances, it’s the first interaction your prospective patient will have with your practice. And it may be the last interaction.

With all else being equal, your prospective patient may choose your competitor over you based solely on web design. Really. 

Think about it: If you offer the same services as your competitor, the only things that differentiate you are your values and the way that you express your values (i.e., your personality). You naturally reflect your values in person in the way that you greet and care for your patients. But it shouldn’t stop there. Your website should be an extension of how you are in person. Your website should give patients the same impression that you give them in person.

You’ll do this through adding personality to your website. Your personality. 

Remember that when given the choice between two similar practices, your prospective patient will go with the one that they connect to the most. And no one connects to a boring, generic website. You need a personality-driven website that grabs your prospective patient and makes them feel at home.

Define Your Practices’ Personality

Every dental practice has its own personality. 

Some practices are bold and extroverted. Others are quiet and steady. Some focus on comfort, others on compassion. 

To define your practice's personality, think of three adjectives you'd like for your practice to be associated with. Here are a few words to get you started:

• Capable
• Caring
• Confident
• Compassionate
• Comprehensive
• Devoted
• Efficient
• Exceptional
• Experienced
• Enthusiastic
• Friendly
• Fun
• Gentle
• Leader
• Modern
• Personalized
• Resourceful
• Trusted
• Quality
• Warm

Choose adjectives that accurately reflect who you are currently as practice and not who you want to become. As your practice grows, your practice’s personality will likewise evolve.

As we’ll explore below, there are tons of ways to show your practice’s personality through your website. But one of the easiest ways is to actually use these three words in your website’s headline. Here’s an example:

Delivering gentle, patient-focused dental care for the whole family.

Speak Directly to Your Audience

Imagine that you’re speaking directly to one person when writing content for your website (because you are). Even though you’ll likely have hundreds or even thousands of visitors on your website each year, you’re always speaking to one person at a time. 

It’s hard to be personal and relational in your content when you imagine that you’re talking to a crowd of people. If you’re talking to a crowd, you must make your content more generic so that it appeals to everyone. But that’s not the best way to show your personality, and definitely not the best way to connect with your website visitor.

To forge an immediate connection with your visitor, you must speak to them like you would in person. 

Here’s a quick question. When in person, would you say:

A) “X Dental Practice is happy to welcome you.”

B) “Welcome to X Dental Practice! How can I help you?”

Unless you’re a robot, you’d probably opt for the latter. Bring that thinking to your website, too. Write everything as if you were speaking it. This shift in thinking will help you bring out your personality. 

It’s also key to choose a voice for your website. Your voice is the way that you speak to your audience. Ideally, the voice on your website and marketing materials should match the voice that your team uses with patients in person. If you’re casual in person, your website’s “voice” should be casual, too. 

Add Images That Reflect Your Personality

The images that you choose for your website are important for several reasons:

Images reflect your personality - Images can be casual, contemplative, fun, wacky, self-assured, etc. Choose images that give the right impression of your practice.

Images provide visual support for your content - Add hand-drawn illustrations, animations, videos, photos, or computer graphics to show step by step what’s involved in a procedure.

Images show a patient’s before and after - Everyone loves to see the results of a dental service. Inspire prospective patients by showing what you’ve done for others.

To accurately convey your personality, you must do more than simply add images to your website. After all, most dental websites have images. Instead, you want to carefully choose images that echo your practice’s personality.

To do this, create a simple style guide that sets standards for your written and visual content. This will ensure that your branding is consistent across the board—on your website and in person at your practice. 

A style guide doesn’t need to be fancy. You can create a one-page list of guidelines to refer to whenever adding new content. Your style guide should include your practice's:

• Preferred font type
• Colors
• Logo variations
• Image types (photo, illustration, black and white, color, filter, etc.)

Include Photos of Your Team

One great way to add personality to your website is by including images of your team. No other practice has the same team as you, so this move will highlight your uniqueness. 

But it also does something more important: It gives your prospective patient the human connection they crave. The idea of going to a dentist can be intimidating for many patients, but when they see your team’s smiling faces, they will feel more at ease. 

For that reason, don’t be afraid to add that image right to your home page. 

When you look at that image, don’t you feel less intimidated?

It’s also key to add your staff to your “About Us” page. While learning about the dentist is important, the dentist isn’t the only person who will come face to face with a patient. Everyone from the receptionist to the hygienist will interact with the patient, so they need representation on your “About Us” page. 

When crafting your bios, don’t just list degrees and accomplishments. Also share fun bits about you and your team, such as hobbies or cool facts. Patients will connect with your practice on a human level just by reading these bios alone, and that may give you the edge over the competition.

Add Testimonials

Testimonials make a huge impact on your website. Testimonials often document a patient’s experience with your team and the services they received. By reading testimonials, your prospective patients get a glimpse into who you are as a practice, and how others feel about you.

Remember that you can pick and choose the testimonials that you display. Ideally, your testimonials should tie back to some facet of your personality. If you want to show that you’re friendly and compassionate, choose testimonials that emphasize those traits. You can carefully weave together every element of your website to show your unique personality. 

You can carefully weave together every element of your website to show your unique personality.

Also, just like you probably wouldn’t include negative reviews on your testimonials page, you also shouldn’t add testimonials that aren’t descriptive. A one-word testimonial like “great” won’t have much impact on your prospective patient. It’s better to have three solid, detailed testimonials than 10 generic, one-worders.  

Final Thoughts

Your website is an extension of your dental practice. It should reflect who you are and what you offer. By creating a website that feels authentic and relatable, you can connect immediately with prospective patients. 
Are you ready to get started with your web design? Let's talk.