Most US practice websites were built by a designer who had never sat at a front desk. They look fine, load slowly on a phone, hide the phone number, and quietly collect patient details through a form that no one checked for HIPAA. This is the brief we use when we build a practice website for a dentist, physio, dermatologist or multi-location clinic in the United States.

1. The site is a front desk, not a brochure

A patient arrives from Google with one of three intentions: book, call, or check whether you take their insurance. The home page therefore needs, above the fold on a phone: the phone number as a tap-to-call button, a "Book online" button that opens a real scheduler, the insurance and payment line, and your location with hours. Everything else — team photos, philosophy of care, awards — belongs below.

We measure this bluntly: on the practices we manage, the sites that put booking and phone above the fold on mobile convert roughly twice as many visitors into appointment requests as the ones that open with a hero image and a slogan.

2. HIPAA: the form is the risk, not the website

HIPAA does not regulate "having a website". It regulates protected health information (PHI) — and a contact form that asks for symptoms, a photo of a tooth, or a date of birth is collecting PHI. Three rules keep you safe:

3. ADA accessibility is now a lawsuit category

Website accessibility suits against healthcare providers under Title III of the ADA have become routine, and they target the obvious: no alt text, forms without labels, colour contrast under 4.5:1, video without captions, and menus that cannot be used with a keyboard. Building to WCAG 2.1 AA from the start costs almost nothing; retrofitting a site after a demand letter costs a great deal more. Our free website audit flags the contrast, label and alt-text failures in about a minute.

4. Booking that patients use

"Request an appointment" forms that promise a call-back convert poorly because the patient wants a time now. Integrate the scheduler your practice management system already offers (Dentrix, Open Dental, Curve, NexHealth, Zocdoc and similar all expose booking widgets) or use a HIPAA-eligible scheduler with a BAA. Show real availability, confirm by SMS, and remind at 48 and 2 hours — no-shows drop measurably when the reminder comes from the same system the patient booked with.

5. Pages that rank: one per service, one per location

Google ranks pages, not practices. A single "Services" page listing twelve treatments ranks for none of them. Each revenue service — implants, Invisalign, emergency dentistry, sleep apnea, paediatric care — needs its own page with the questions patients actually ask, transparent pricing bands where you are comfortable publishing them, and a booking button. Multi-location groups need a page per office with its own address, hours, team and embedded map; that page is what your Google Business Profile should link to.

6. Speed, security and the boring essentials

Under 2.5 seconds to Largest Contentful Paint on a mid-range Android phone; HTTPS everywhere; a privacy policy that mentions HIPAA and your tracking; a Notice of Privacy Practices linked from the footer; and structured data (Dentist / MedicalClinic / Physician schema) so Google understands the practice. None of this is glamorous. All of it is the difference between a site that ranks and one that doesn't.

"A practice website has one job: get the patient from the search result to a booked slot without a phone call if they don't want one, and with one if they do."

What it costs and how we work

A compliant single-location practice site with online booking, service pages and location schema is a fixed-scope build with us, not an open-ended retainer — see web development and price your own project with the cost calculator. US practices work with our USA team in New York and Los Angeles hours. If you would rather see it before you commit, ask for a free demo of your practice site on our stack.