How to Design a Good Medical Website

In the Internet age, consumers have more access than ever to medical research. The resulting demand from medical informational searches has created a thriving medical website marketplace. Given this expanding market, a properly designed and informative website can be extremely successful.

• 1

  Select a content management system, or CSM, package for your website. With a dynamic, relevant medical site, you need to make sure that you add new information regularly. A CMS like Joomla or WordPress will allow you to produce a great-looking site in hours and to easily update your site with information. Not only are these CSM packages extremely powerful, they are also free.

• 2

  Develop your category structure and document the categories for your site. With WordPress or Joomla, you will have the opportunity to assign categories and subcategories to your entries. As you add your entries, these categories will allow your users to quickly and easily drill down into the information they need. As an example, you might have a major category for cancer with a subcategory for breast cancer. A user looking for information on breast cancer would then easily be able to find all of the relevant entries based on that subcategory.

• 3

  Pick a theme or template that works for your site. The beauty of both WordPress and Joomla is that you can download many free themes and templates straight into the respective applications. These templates provide the basic structure for your new medical site.

• 4

  Install your CMS onto your hosting provider after you have purchased your domain name and hosting package. The instructions for installation are quite simple for either WordPress or Joomla and are available on each respective site.

• 5

  Edit the standard content. With your CSM installed and your theme loaded, you will have a standard page that needs to be edited to reflect your vision of the page. Work through your site and edit each of the standard text areas with your information.

• 6

  Begin writing your entries. Before you launch your medical website, you need to develop some content. You may want to start with articles or entries that support your top-level categories. Generally, before you attempt to launch the site, you will want at least one entry per major category. The more information you have upon your launch, the more successful your site is likely to become.

• 7

  Launch your site. Add your URL to Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Each of these search engines allow you to manually add your URL to their databases. By entering the site, you will increase the speed with which your site will be indexed by the search providers.

• 8

  Advertise your site. Finally, begin advertising your site so that potential users will know you exist. Use social networking and blog sites to send users to your new Web property.