Online Quality Content: The TMI Effect

From hearing about the grotesque horrors from someone being sick to hearing the disturbing tale of someone’s battle with a foot fungus, there is such a thing as too much information. When it comes to investing in a medical service or purchasing a product, potential customers may actually avoid websites with too much information or text. Information overload can lead to people seeking services elsewhere.

Avoiding too much information

In a study by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, AAAS, titled “On Making the Right Choice: The Deliberation-Without-Attention Effect,” participants chose between four cars. With one car being better than the rest, the first group of participants was given four facts about each car while a second group was given 12 facts about each car. The results show that the group that had less information chose the better car 60 percent of the time. The group that was given 12 facts about the cars only chose the best care 20 percent of the time. This study is only one example of how too much information can dissuade a potential buyer and the same applies to potential patients for a medical practice. With the advancements of the digital market, a variety of businesses continues to rush to create a website representing their brand, services, products and company information. Medical practices also greatly benefit from having websites. However, overloading a website with too much content will actually have a negative instead of a positive effect on the website’s conversion rate.

Quality content for the audience

While a website does need the right amount of content to describe services and rank online, clogging up pages with too much content or too many complex terms can make it difficult for potential patients to navigate. It is important to remember that the people looking at a medical practice’s website will be people outside of the medical field. Thus, professional practice websites need to balance quality with comprehension. In an article online, Google states that ranking based on numbers and factors that include the freshness, diversity, rich textual and originality of content. Another factor to consider is that keywords can rank higher in search results without requiring a large amount of dense content. This is why it is crucial to have a company who understands the ins and outs of online marketing and content creation. At Doctor Genius, we can help you reach more potential patients with custom content. We strategically create content that matches your needs while also helping the website rank on search results to bring in more patients. Making a website more complex and dense will lower the conversion for potential patients. If you are interested in creating a website for your practice and branching out into the digital market, give us a call today.