Site Rescue - case study

Share a Smile

Business type

Share a Smile is a specialist dental centre offering the 3 core specialisms of Periodontics, Prosthodontics and Orthodontics. The practice provides highly specialist treatments to patients referred by their general dentist as well as others who may contact the practice directly.

Project drivers

The key problems with Share a Smile's website can be summarised as follows:

  1. Service proposition - the website effectively split the services offered into 2 separate domains (one domain for Orthodontic services and one for the other 2 specialist areas). This resulted in a slightly confusing identity being portrayed and didn't capitalise of the appeal of providing all 3 services under one roof.
  2. Site structure - the information architecture of the site made it difficult for users to find the information they needed and also resulted in a large amount of useful information rarely being accessed.
  3. Site terminology - the terminology used in parts of the site was not easy to understand by visitors who were new to the three specialist areas described.
  4. Usability - Related to points 2 & 3 above was the general usability of the site which was on the whole quite weak making the process of finding your way around and interacting with the site more difficult.
  5. Search engine optimisation - the site was not optimised for the search engines which resulted in little or no new patient enquiries were being generated this way.

Project methodology

First of all, the sites' content was analyzed with key service offerings separated out and listed using a variety of alternative terminology for each. We then highlighted all the potential phrases that users might use when searching for or discussing each service type and tested these phrases to find out which ones were the most popular.

We then used the results to create the information architecture of the site therefore ensuring that the site's navigation and structure was highly user centric.

Next we got agreement from the dental specialists to present all 3 treatment disciplines within one website domain and set about building the key sections of the site with suitable information hierarchy and clear visual design which incorporated Share a Smile's existing logo, colors and other elements of their corporate ID.

Search engine optimisation techniques were applied throughout the design and build stage which was made more straight forward because of the keyword search phrase analysis we had conducted at the start of the project.

Results

The site has proved to be a major success with the litmus test being a growing stream of well qualified search engine generated traffic and enquiries - something the Share a Smile dental centre had not experienced before.

Site URLs - www.shareasmile.co.uk (phase 1) and www.shareasmile.co.uk/braces (phase 2).

screenshot - share a smile home page