An optometry website serves two groups: strangers booking a first exam, and patients who already know you and need one small thing. Build for the second group first, because they tend to visit more often.
Short answer
An optometry website needs a contact and hours page, a way to request or change an appointment, a contact lens reorder page, a first-visit page, a page for children, and a short page about your doctors. Build them in that order, starting with what returning patients need.
Think about who actually opens an eye doctor's website on a Tuesday. Many are existing patients holding a reminder card, a text, or a pair of glasses with a bent arm. They are not shopping. They want one answer fast.
That visitor wants the phone number, today's hours, how to move an appointment, and whether you can reorder their contact lenses. If those take three taps to find, they call, and your front desk answers the same question all day.
Practices send reminders by card, text or email. Whatever you send should land on one short page that says how to book, who to call if the online route does not suit them, and what to have ready. Add a booking link from a scheduling tool if you use one, and put that page address in every reminder. A reminder that points to a home page with six menu items can lose people who meant to book.
The list below serves the most visitors with the least work. Each item is one page. Finish the first three before you touch the rest, even if the frames page is the fun one. Our optometrist site guide covers the exam and lens pages in detail.
Optical questions can shift with the calendar, and your own front desk will know how. Late summer may bring parents with school forms and early summer sunglasses questions. Toward the end of the year some patients ask about plan renewals, though the timing differs by plan.
You do not need a page for each season. You need a short note on the right page, kept current. A line near the top of the children's page in August does more than a new menu item would. Remove the note when the season ends.
Never state what a plan covers. Tell people to read their own plan documents and bring the card, and say your office can help check what applies.
Leave off anything that reads as a diagnosis, a cure or a promise about how someone will see. Describe what an exam includes and who does it. Do not say what an exam will find or prevent.
Eye care is regulated, and the rules differ by state. Check your own licensing board's rules on advertising before you publish, and keep a plain line on each page saying the site is information about the practice and is not legal or medical advice.
Skip before-and-after claims, star ratings and quoted reviews unless you have confirmed what your board allows. Photos of your own team and shop are usually a better choice than stock photos of eyes.
If you sell frames, show what you carry in words and a few good photographs of your own display. A visitor wants to know the brands you stock, whether you handle repairs and whether they can come in just to have glasses adjusted.
There is no online store checkout on a site built here, so do not show a cart. Say plainly that frames are chosen in the shop and invite people to drop in or book a fitting. Keep brand names as text, since logos belong to the makers and a page full of them can look like an endorsement you do not have.
Most of these slips are small, and each one costs a phone call. Hours often differ between the site, the map listing and the door. A phone number set as a picture cannot be tapped. A doctor page with no photo makes the practice feel anonymous.
An exam page that mixes routine care with medical conditions confuses the person who only wants new glasses. Say outright whether you repair or adjust glasses without an appointment, and make sure the link in your reminders does not land on the home page.
Ask the front desk which question they answer most often, and make sure the site answers it. That list is a better guide to your next page than anything a marketing book will tell you. Then ask a family member to book a children's exam from your site while you watch, without helping. Fix every place they hesitate before writing another page.
Contact and hours. Existing patients are your most frequent visitors, and they usually want a phone number, today's hours or a way to move an appointment. Everything else can follow.
You can say which plans your office works with, and say they should confirm details with their own plan. Do not state what any plan covers, since that is between the patient and the plan.
Check your own licensing board's rules first, since they differ by state. This page is not legal or medical advice. Photos of your team and your shop are the safe, useful choice.
Start with about seven core pages and add more only when patients keep asking the same question. A short, accurate site beats a long one with stale hours and old frame photos.
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