How Much Does a Medical Website Design Cost?

Having a good web presence is critical for a thriving modern medical practice. In times when people can’t easily and quickly go to hospitals, clinics, and other health institutions to seek medical assistance, the availability of online health care options like medical applications and websites allows people to still get access to the different medical services they need and to book appointments without visiting the physical medical facility. It also allows medical professionals to cater to the needs of their patients, provide the necessary assistance, and at the same time continue to keep their practice running. Whether you are operating your medical practice offline or online, having a professional medical website is a must. Today, we are going to talk about:

• Why should you consider creating a medical website?
• Factors that influence medical website design cost
• Customized vs template medical website design
• The cost of medical website design 

Why should you consider creating a medical website?

The world is gradually and continuously shifting towards the digital world. Digitalization has brought significant changes in how things around us work nowadays and it has definitely altered how we live our daily lives. The global pandemic plays a major role in this digital shift. In the hope to curb the spread of the coronavirus, people are urged to stay at home and limit physical interactions. Digitalization allows people and industries to meet in one platform despite the physical restrictions and without having people leave their homes.

Since the onset of the pandemic, we have witnessed how digitalization boomed at an expeditious rate and this trend is expected to run on even after things get back to where they were before the pandemic. As the need for digital products and services continues to grow, more and more industries are starting to jump into the digital bandwagon, and this includes the health sector. 

In an era where almost everything has gone online and with your competitors now embracing digitalization, forgoing the idea of building your own online presence will only cause you to get stuck miles away behind the competition. A good way to start building an online presence is to create a medical website. But why should you really consider creating a medical website? Aside from the reasons we brought up earlier, there are other good reasons why more and more medical practitioners, clinics, hospitals, and other healthcare providers are now getting interested in building a medical website. Some of these primary reasons are as follows:

• It helps improve brand recognition
• It helps build better communication and relationship with patients
• It helps nurture customer loyalty
• It helps keep your practice maintain competitiveness
• It helps boost marketing

Unlike the old times, people nowadays don’t directly go to the clinics and hospitals anymore when seeking medical assistance. Instead, they turn to the internet first, search and compare various health care providers available online, and make an appointment. If your practice is not visible online, you will be losing a great volume of potential patients. Also, a medical website can serve as a significant channel where potential patients can find reliable medical information, and at the same time, it’s a viable platform for your practice to showcase and market your medical services and products. 

Factors that influence medical website design cost

There is no standard cost for medical website design that is applicable to all practices. The medical website design cost is quite flexible and it greatly depends on the different factors and variables involved. It can stretch from hundreds to thousands of dollars per design. It helps to note that every medical website is unique on its own and thus, each involves unique requirements as well. While it is hard to give a cost estimate without going deeper into the specifics of the project first, these primary factors can give you some ideas on how much a medical website design costs. 

• Goals and objectives

The goals and objectives should be clearly defined beforehand. The goals and objectives affect the overall cost and they also serve as a compass that will guide you all throughout the process, ensuring you are on the right track and at the same time a calibration tool that allows you to monitor the progress of the project and measures success rate. What are your goals and objectives in building a medical website? For instance, are you building a simple website just so you can have a space online you can call your own or a more sophisticated one that will provide you and your patients with more functionalities? 

If you opt for the first option, maybe building a website on a free CMS or website builder like WordPress, Wix, and Weebly is a practical option. These are easy-to-use website builders that allow users to build a website even without coding knowledge. If your goal is to create a decent and professional medical website design that offers more functionalities, you may choose to go for paid plans. Below is a quick overview of the most popular CMS and website builders that medical professionals use. 

• Content

Who will create the content? What types of content do you plan to use on your website? Will you go for all-text content or a mixture of different media like texts, images, videos, and infographics? For websites, content is king. At the same time, it is an art and a powerful tool that can help your website connect with your target audience, attract more visitors, build your brand and reputation, and drive users to take action. Content development for medical websites is a tricky and time-consuming task. It requires more than just mere writing skills and experience. You’ll need a dedicated team of content developers who have in-depth knowledge about your niche, and who can perform thorough research about the subject matter. If you will outsource content creation to another team, you can expect a cut from the cost that the website design and development company will charge you for the medical website design since they will no longer have to develop the contents from scratch. But still, you need to pay a separate amount for the content developed by the dedicated content creation team. 

• Time elements

How much time is needed to complete the entire project? The more complicated your design and the larger the scope of the project is; the more time it will likely consume. Moreover, the longer the time needed to complete the design; the costlier it can get. This is true for both per project and per hour contracts. The estimated time needed to design and build a website varies greatly depending on factors like the skills, experience, and expertise of the team behind it, the scope of the project, the complexity of your website, and the website builder you choose. You have to understand that designing and building a professional medical website will consume more time than building a simple website. 

• Pages

The homepage is the star of your website. It is often the first part that your visitors will see when they visit your website. In order to attract the attention and interest of your visitors, you need to ensure that the homepage is well designed. It should contain the highlights of your website. Though it plays a critical part in your website, you should not just stop at the homepage. The internal landing pages are also equally important and oftentimes, these pages are the areas where visitors spend most of their time. The number of pages you need for your medical website, as well as the information, content, and format you want to add to each of these pages will affect the web design cost. Websites with more pages cost more than those with just a few pages. Moreover, pages that consist of simple paragraphs and format are easier and quicker to implement, and thus, require less time. On the flip side, complex pages that include many linked lists, visual aids, graphics, videos, and other related media require more time to implement. Again, the time needed to complete the web design project affects its cost.  

• Integrations and functionality

The more integrations and functionalities your website needs, the higher the cost will be. Integrating additional technical components and advanced functionalities like a forum, message board, webform, registration system, photo gallery, and in-depth calendar into your website design can increase the website design cost. You can use and easily add free modules and plugins for specific functionality (like the WordPress booking plugin called BirchPress) to your medical website. Though free to use and install, you still have to configure and customize them in order to match your unique needs and preferences. Configuration and customization will consume time, and therefore, will affect the design cost especially if the website design team charges you per hour. 

• Who’s building it

Will you develop the design yourself or will you hire a professional website design and development company to do the job? If you choose the latter option, you’ll have to ask further- will you go for a per-project contract or hire a dedicated website design team for an hourly contract? The level of expertise, knowledge, skillset, and experience of the team designing the website also affect the cost. Expert website designers often charge higher hourly or per-project rates than those non-experts. Whether you will hire an expert team or a non-expert web designer is all up to you. You have to remember, though, if you want the best website, you’ll have to choose the best team.

You will save hundreds of dollars if you choose to develop the design yourself since you don’t have to pay professional fees anymore. However, this may not be a good idea especially if you are looking for long-term success. Not hiring a professional may initially save you money, but in the long run, you may end up spending more. Unless you are an expert web designer yourself and you are equipped with the right knowledge, skills, and tools to get the job done, it is better to leave the work to experts who know the ins and outs of medical website design. Please note that prices between different web design freelancers and website development agencies vary. 

• Design 

Whether you will go for a template design or a customized design, the design itself will add to the overall cost. More elaborate designs require more customization, time, and expertise. Thus, will also be more expensive. It is possible to develop a professional-looking medical website using a template design. However, you can only customize it to a limited degree and it can also restrict the performance of your site. In addition, most of the template designs are poorly coded which can cause a negative impact on your website’s performance on search engines. Choosing a custom design, on the other hand, allows you to personalize all the components of your website including the content, layout, taglines, and imagery.

Customized vs template design

The more complex your medical website design is, the more time is required for implementation, and the higher the cost will be. A template design, also referred to as a page template or website template, is a set of HTML webpages or pre-designed web page templates provided by CMS, website builders, and third-party providers. Most template designs allow users to plug-in their pre-made content into the website they are creating. As its name suggests, a custom design is a personalized web page design that is custom-tailored to fit the unique needs and requirements of a brand’s website. 

A template design takes lesser time to implement and has a shorter development cycle than a customized one. Also, you don’t have to be a coding whiz when working with template design. Template designs are a viable choice for low-budget web design projects. In terms of time and cost, we can say that choosing a template design is a more practical option. If so, why should you choose a customized design? Is customized design worth it? True, investing in additional features, high-end, advanced elements, and premium custom websites will increase the web design cost but this option offers enormous benefits. Below are some of them.

• A custom design allows you full control over the design of your website. 
• It allows you to create a uniquely designed website that will best represent your brand.
• It offers a distinct edge and better branding over your competitors. 
• It offers better scalability.
• It gives you full ownership of your design and website.
• It allows you to build your website according to specific SEO techniques.
• It allows you to create a medical website design with all the aesthetics and functionalities you need.  

Some UI UX design companies offer website design implementation using a template with just minimal fees. We’ve tried to check some professionals offering such service but we can’t find one that is worth considering for creating professional websites for medical practice. A custom website, on the other hand, can cost you at least $3,000 depending on the factors specified above. 

How much does a medical website design cost?

Down to our main topic for this post, how much does a medical website design really cost? We have already outlined the primary factors that can affect the cost and while these factors can’t provide you with the exact figure, at least you’ll have an idea of how they can affect the cost. Appwrk IT Solutions can help make your dream medical website design a reality. We have a highly skilled and experienced team of web designers and developers who have already proven their expertise in building lucrative medical web designs.

Our expert web designers and developers charge around $15 to $25 per hour depending on their skillset and level of expertise. As for the overall cost of medical website design, it greatly relies on the complexity of the design you want or need, as well as the number of hours needed to complete the entire project. As mentioned earlier,  the more complex your medical website design is, the more time is required for building the design and the more expensive it can get. With that being said, we believe the right question here is not the cost of a medical website design. Rather, how much you are willing to invest to get that awesome medical website. Yes, a medical website is a significant investment critical for a modern medical practice and it should be treated that way. It is similar to investing in education and training so you can be a better medical practitioner. 

When we say investment, we are expecting that such investment will provide us with a good return. You will not be developing a web design just to have something to show to your potential patients. Rather, you are building a profitable website that can bring in more patients and passive income to your practice. The amount you are willing to invest will affect the quality of the website and the returns you can get out of it. That is, the better the website, the better the investment. 

Endnote

A medical website will affect the reputation and image of your practice, and it also reflects how professional you are. With that being said, you need to make sure that the web design offers the functionalities and elements that your target market will find useful and reliable. Something that will make your website visitor think like “This healthcare clinic seems to be the most professional, reliable, qualified, and skilled in town. They can surely provide us with the best medical service we deserve. I shall book an appointment.” In today’s highly competitive medical industry, you can’t afford to lose valuable potential patients. A solid online presence is critical but more importantly, you need to make that good impression and grab that one chance to attract the attention and interest of your target market. The first impression lasts, and this is also true in medical practice. One best way to attract potential patients and make a good first impression is to make your medical website as professional, easy to use, well-designed, informative, and pleasing to the eyes as it can be.