Last time we worked out what a booked patient costs you and what a good number looks like. You can read that guide here.
This one is about why the number is what it is.
When a clinic page converts at 4% instead of 7%, it’s tempting to look for something broken. Usually nothing is broken. The page loads, the words are fine, the booking button works. What’s missing is an answer, and the visitor left to find it somewhere else.
Someone who has just clicked your advert has a short mental checklist. They run it fast, on a phone, while their back hurts. If your page answers the list, they book. If it doesn’t, they go back to the search results, and you have paid for the click either way.
Here is the list.
1. What does it cost?
This is the first thing they want to know and the thing clinics are most reluctant to say.
The reasoning behind leaving it off is that price should come after the patient understands the value, or that a phone conversation handles it better. Neither survives contact with someone comparing three clinics on a phone. Silence on price doesn’t remove the question. It sends them to a competitor who answered it.
Put your prices on the page. A first appointment and a follow-up is enough. If your fees vary, give a range and say what moves it.
Why it works: A visitor who can’t find the price assumes the worst and leaves. One who sees a figure they can live with has already made the hard part of the decision.
2. Does my insurance cover this?
If you work anywhere near an office population, a large share of your visitors have private medical cover through their employer and no idea whether they can use it with you.
For those people, “we’re recognised by BUPA and AXA” changes the appointment from a £60 decision to a free one. That is the single biggest objection you will ever remove, and it usually sits on a separate insurance page that nobody clicks.
Put the insurers you work with on the page the advert points at, near the price.
Why it works: Cover turns a cost into no cost. Nothing else on your page moves the decision that far.
3. Do you treat what’s wrong with me?
A patient doesn’t have a musculoskeletal condition. They have a shoulder that hurts when they reach for a seatbelt.
Your services list may well cover it, but it covers it in your language, and they are skimming in theirs. If your advert was about knee pain, the page needs to say knee pain in the headline, then list the specific problems you see most often in the words a patient would use to a friend.
Why it works: Until they’re sure you handle their problem, nothing else on the page matters to them.
4. When could I actually come?
Most clinic pages carry an address and a phone number and no opening hours at all.
The patient’s real question isn’t whether you’re open. It’s whether they can get to you without taking half a day off. Can they come before work, at lunch, after five, on a Saturday? For anyone with a job, that question decides everything, and an unanswered version of it usually means no appointment.
Put your hours on the page, and if you have early or late slots, say so plainly rather than leaving them to be discovered in a booking calendar.
Why it works: People book appointments that fit their week. If they can’t tell whether yours does, they don’t chance it.
5. What actually happens at the first appointment?
For anyone who has never seen a physio, an osteopath or a chiropractor, this is genuinely unnerving. They don’t know how long it takes, whether they’ll be treated on the day or just assessed, what to wear, or whether it will hurt.
Nervous people put decisions off, and a decision put off is a decision not made. Four or five lines covering how long it lasts, what you’ll do, and what they should bring removes most of it.
Why it works: Nerves about the unknown are the main reason a first appointment gets postponed. Describing the appointment removes the unknown.
6. Who am I going to see?
Your clinical experience is one of the strongest things you have and it is almost always on the wrong page.
The “meet the team” page is read by people who are already interested. The page you’re paying to send strangers to often names nobody at all, or names a practitioner with no photograph and no background. Twenty years of practice, a specialism, and a face all sit one click away from the person deciding whether to trust you with their neck.
Put the practitioner on the page. A photograph, a name, and one line on what they’re known for.
Why it works: People book people. A page with nobody on it asks a stranger to trust an address.
Six answers you already have
Look down that list again and notice that none of it is new work. You know your prices. You know your insurers, your hours, your specialisms, and who’s on shift. Every answer exists already, usually somewhere on your own website, on a page the advert never sends anyone to.
That’s what makes this the cheapest improvement available to a clinic. You are not creating anything. You are moving what you already have onto the page you’re paying to fill.
Next time we’ll look at what happens when none of this gets fixed, and why the conclusions that feel most obvious at that point are usually the wrong ones.