I'm a student at Maryville University in St. Louis and am taking
a web design class. For my final project I am developing a web site
for my husband's new practice here in town. As part of that project
I have to put together a "Business Plan" for his web site. I need
some statistics or numbers to use in that plan. After finding your
web site from chiroweb's site, I
thought I would write and see if you had a few minutes to answer a few
quick questions for me. The project is due Wednesday (7-7), so if
you have some time by then, I would appreciate a reply!
1) How long has your web site been up?
2) Do you have a hit counter or some way of determining how
much traffic your site gets and if so, do you have any numbers you would
be willing to share with me?
3) Has your site generated much in the way of e-mail response
to your office?
4) Has your site generated any new patients for you?
5) Has the cost of running your site been greater than the
financial returns you have seen?
6) Do you have any suggestions for anyone in the chiropractic
business who is considering setting up a web site? How important
do you think it is for a chiropractor to have a web site in view of other
methods of marketing a practice?
7) Do you feel that your site serves more informational purposes
for the general public than it has served as a basis for patient generation??
Thanks -- any additional comments you would care to add would be helpful!! And your web site is, indeed, very nice!!
Thanks--
Linda Xxxxxxx
St. Louis, MO
Reply:
Hi Linda:
We use our web site to the best potential we know of:
patient list emails, testimonials to drive our patients and their friends
to the site, register with all search engines, etc..
To answer your questions:
1. The site has been up one year.
2. The hit counter reads for the month of June 1999: 144
front page hits, 576 site hits
3. I have had about 10 health related questions or philosophy
challenges by way of e-mail thus far.
4. Zero new patients have been generated from the web site.
(though a patient from the internet yellow pages)
5. My cost of the site is:
$20.00 per month at&t unlimited net access includes
30 megs of space.
$35.00/year domain name.
$25.00/year namesecure (to transfer domain name
to my at&t space)
The site has not generated income, but it may in the future.
If not, I still enjoy creating the web pages!
6. A web site is zero importance in the chiropractic profession.
Word of mouth will spread much faster than any search engine...If there
is love and compassion for the patients.
7. If the site serves the public information at all, then it
serves more than patient generation (which is zero). And it has served
information by way of e-mail. I do, however, feel that most of those
hits to my site are chiropractors, chiropractic students, or those that
do not believe chiropractic principles. I get many hits referred
from http://www.chiroweb.com, a pro
chiropractic site. I get several hits from Xxxxxxxxx, a chiropractic
"hate" site. I believe few hits are from potential patients.
I hope this information helps.
Yours in Health,
Michael A. Haley, D.C.
Response:
Thanks so much for your timely reply! I appreciate the help
and it pretty confirmed what both my husband and I thought was true of
web sites for chiropractors. I hope my web design teacher (who is
into marketing on the web) concurs!! Best of wishes for continued
success in your practice and your award-winning web site!!
-Linda
P.S...I found your site off of chiroweb, too...but I guess I need
to take a look at Xxxxxxxxx just for laughs...which I could use a few of
here at crunch time!!
-Thanks again!!