Setting up a new clinic means dealing with an enormous list: renovation, equipment, staff, permits, purchasing. The website usually comes last. Many clinic directors only think of it two weeks before opening, and by then it is too late to do it properly.
Our advice: launch the website a month before opening. Below, we count back three months from opening day and lay out what to do at each stage.
Why a month before opening, not on opening day
Three reasons.
Search engines need time. Once a new site goes live, Google usually takes anywhere from a few days to a few weeks to index it. Launch on opening day and patients searching for the clinic's name will not find you for the whole first month.
People start looking before you open. Once the sign goes up and the renovation hoarding appears, people nearby search online to find out when the clinic opens and what it treats. If the website is already up by then, you capture the first wave of people who want to come.
Nobody has time in the last two weeks. During that stretch the director and the team are dealing with everything happening on site. No one is going to sit down to sign off on website copy and pick photos.
Three months before opening: kick off and settle the structure
What to do at this stage:
- Choose the web agency and complete the consultation. Explain the clinic's specialty, its main services and the kind of patients you want to attract.
- Settle the site structure. Decide which pages you need: home, clinic hours, doctors, services, first-visit information and directions, contact and booking. If there are private treatments, decide which ones get a page of their own.
- Buy the domain. Decide on the domain name as early as possible, because the business cards, signage and Google Business Profile will all use it.
- Set up the Google Business Profile and LINE official account at the same time. Address verification for the Google profile takes time, so the earlier the better.
At this stage the clinic has no photos yet and the clinic hours are not settled. That is fine; what matters is settling the structure and the direction of the copy.
Two months before opening: prepare the content
This is the stage that demands the most of the clinic's time:
- Doctor information. Credentials, specialties, and a few words in the doctor's own voice.
- Service descriptions. The doctors provide the professional content; the web agency turns it into text patients can understand.
- Logo and visuals. If the clinic has commissioned a designer for its visual identity, it should be finalized by now so the website can follow it.
- A first draft of the clinic hours. It will still change, and that is fine; just have a version.
Photos are where things most often get stuck, because the clinic is still being renovated. The solution is to shoot in two batches: doctor portraits can be taken early in a studio or against a clean background, while interior photos wait until the renovation is finished. Launch with the doctor portraits and design renderings, then swap in the interior photos around opening.
One month before opening: launch
- Go live. Launch first and fill in the gaps later. Label the clinic hours with the opening date and "clinic hours after opening".
- Point the Google Business Profile's website field to the new site. The clinic name, address and phone number on the profile must match the website exactly.
- Submit the site to search engines. This is the web agency's job; just confirm they have done it.
- Open bookings for after opening day. If you offer private consultations, open online booking for post-opening slots now so the first week's schedule is not empty.
- Put the LINE official account link on the website. That way, people with questions before opening have somewhere to ask them.
Two weeks before opening to opening week: fill in and check
- Once the renovation is done, shoot the interior photos and swap them in.
- Replace the clinic hours with the final version.
- Walk through the whole site on a phone: does tapping the phone number place a call, does the map open navigation, does submitting the booking form trigger a notification?
- Put the opening event or announcement on the homepage.
The first month after opening
Going live is not the end. In the first month after opening, the front desk will be asked a lot of questions. Write down the five most common ones and add them to the website's FAQ. When the clinic hours change, update the site the same day.
Once that habit is in place, the website stays accurate.
If you are already out of time
If you are starting with less than a month to go, there is still a way: launch a single page first.
A one-page site carries the five most important things: clinic name and specialty, opening date, clinic hours, address and directions, phone number and LINE. It can be done in one to two weeks, so patients can find you and the Google Business Profile has somewhere to link to. Build the full website after opening, reusing that page's content.
To plan the timeline for a new clinic's website, fill in the form with your expected opening date and we will work back from it together during the consultation. For the full picture on clinic websites, see our clinic websites page.