While many DCs are told that a website for a chiropractic practice will cost thousands of dollars, advancing technology is providing otherwise. No longer should a well-designed, elaborate, multi-paged chiropractic website cost a doctor a "$295 setup fee" (sometimes used to pay the sales commission) and "only $49 per month" (for a total first-year cost of almost $900). The rule-of-thumb for today's websites, even the more sophisticated ones, is simple:
- Never Pay a Setup Fee
- Never Pay a Monthly Hosting Fee
- Never Pay More than $100 per Year
Advancing technology also brings a substantial level of intricacy and design to chiropractic practice websites. The goals of a chiropractic website are to provide information, support your practice and encourage new patients. The tools to accomplish this should include:
- A Unique Web Address.
- Basic Information: facts about your practice, office hours, etc.
- Introduction of Doctors and Staff: including photographs.
- Additional Information: services you provide, wellness philosophy, etc.
- Current Health News: constantly updated to bring visitors back to your site.
- Question-and-Answer Discussion Forums: where patients and potential patients can get answers to better understand the value of chiropractic.
- Information Request E-Mail: for patients who want to contact you privately.
- Appointment Requests: allows existing and new patients to make appointments on line.
- Online Health History Forms: Patients fill out health history forms on secure pages before they come in for the first appointment, allowing your staff the ability to create a file in advance.
- E-Mail Newsletter-Compatible: A chiropractic website should work in concert with a chiropractic e-mail newsletter program.
- Total Update Control: The doctor should have full control of the content, layout and look of the website, with the ability to modify as desired.
- Customer Support by E-Mail and Phone: Without web support, you're lost.
While there are a number of medically-oriented websites that have offered some of these services, many of these sites will not allow doctors of chiropractic the same website services they offer medical doctors. Once again, DCs are being discriminated against.
In an effort to provide even more to DCs than other sites offer MDs, ChiroWeb.com offers all of the above features and more. For example, the chiropractic websites will be featured in a directory on ChiroWeb.com, the largest, chiropractic website on the internet. These websites will be part of a chiropractic community that enjoys visits from approximately 60,000 visitors every month.
The cost for this chiropractic website is only $89. You can design it anyway you like, in as little as 20 mminutes. Because this is only offered to doctors of chiropractic, you must use your User ID and Password (provided at the top of the front page of this issue of Dynamic Chiropractic) to enter the chiropractic website administrator ( http://www.chiroweb.com/community).
Our programmers are still adding the finishing touches, but the website program will be available on September 15, 2000. At that time, you can go to http://www.Chiroweb.com/community and enter your User ID and Password. From there you just follow the simple instructions to produce your own chiropractic website.
