By Pattie Stechschulte
Dr. Leana Kart
Atlanta, Ga.
www.atlantapainrelief.com
Online since January 2002
Today’s Chiropractic: How did you get online?
Dr. Leana Kart: I have a patient who has a web business who said that
I was missing a big market. So, I asked him what I needed to do, and he did
everything for me. He registered it with couple search engines, and it has worked
out really well. He did it because he was so overwhelmed by his results.
TC: What type of response have you had?
LK: Patients have been looking at it, but people that we don’t know
look at it more. We have been getting new patients at least 4 to 5 new patients
a month from it. It seems like the people that are looking for a chiropractor
via the Internet are very well versed. They seem to be the 20-something year
olds, that are definitely in the Internet or technology field, and they seem
to have done their homework. This latest patient knew what a subluxation was,
and when I asked him where he heard that word, he told me that he had done all
his research on the Internet.
I ask all these Internet patients, why did they pick me? They just say based
on either location or experience. It is interesting because one of them drove
from Murphy, N.C., because it said “serving the community for 14 years”
on the site.
TC: What are your future plans for your site?
LK: I picked out some of the information that went on the site. Now that
it has been around for a couple months, I want more patient testimonials and
a questionnaire that people can take to see if chiropractic is something they
should consider. Also, we are going to have a feature on the site where prospective
patients can automatically make an appointment, so they don’t even have
to call in.
TC: What is your advice to other chiropractors?
LK: I think other chiropractors should use it as a marketing tool, I
can’t really say how much you need to spend because mine is a different
type of case. Honestly I have not looked through the web to see who else is
on there, because I never really thought this was going to be a way to get new
patients, so I wasn’t very focused on it as my patient was. I have been
pleasantly surprised. My web site is geared towards for people that don’t
know me as far as general information about our office hours, what insurance
will bill, what conditions chiropractic can help, not necessarily to educate
the [current] patient.
Dr. Richard Stein
www.steinchiropractic.com
Online since 1999
Today’s Chiropractic: How did you get online?
Dr. Richard Stein: As you know so many of us have sites now because there
are companies that do templates and you just plug in your information, but we
really didn’t want to do that. When we first started out, we had patients
that were with a web development company and we made an arrangement to work
with them. We gave them the content and we finally got the site up in 1999.
We were out there on the early side.
Our site is primarily used as an educational tool, it is not a heavy marketing
tool and it is not big on soliciting. The bulk of it is getting the information
out about what we do, because there is so much misinformation out there. We
offer them a way to sign up for our monthly e-mail newsletter and we have a
question and answer section where we get e-mail questions about once or twice
a month.
TC: What type of response have you had?
RS: We do get referrals from it. If you do a local search under Google,
we managed to get up to number seven position, so that was a tremendous achievement
for us. You have to work with the people who know how the search engines work.
We do get a fair number of inquiries, it has increased over the years, and most
of the people are looking for something specific, find our site then they call
us. This year we have probably had about 20 referrals so far. It is nothing
to sneeze about for something just sitting there.
TC: What are your future plans for your site?
RS: We are in the process of doing a face lift; we are changing our navigation
and some of our content, but because we practice upper cervical specific, it
is very important to find ways to get that information out there to the public.
Also, I think if people could do a virtual office tour that would help prospective
patients feel more comfortable.
TC: What is your advice to other chiropractors?
RS: If you have the budget, I would encourage chiropractors to get a
custom site so it has the taste, touch and feel that they want, as opposed to
these out-of-the box templates. The patients and prospective patients get a
much better feel for who and what they represent.
© Copyright 2002 Today's Chiropractic