What patients need from a clinic website
Patients look for a clinic when they or a family member need care, often on a phone and sometimes while unwell. They want to know which specialities and services you offer, whether you are taking new patients, how to book, opening hours, how to get there and what to do in an emergency. Older patients and people with disabilities are a large part of the audience, so readability and accessibility are not optional extras.
This audit runs our full AI & Digital Growth Audit and explains the results for clinics and medical practices: booking visibility, mobile layout, accessibility scan results, consent behaviour, privacy around health data, MedicalClinic structured data, trust details and speed.
Specific points for medical practices
- Online booking (Doctolib and similar tools) and a tap-to-call number on the first phone screen.
- Emergency and out-of-hours information that is easy to find.
- Accessibility: contrast, text size, labels and keyboard access, measured with axe-core.
- Practitioner names, qualifications and registration details where national rules require them.
- Trackers on condition or treatment pages, which may reveal health information to third parties.
Privacy and accessibility deserve extra weight
Health information is special category data under the GDPR. Forms that ask for symptoms, chat widgets that collect them and advertising pixels on treatment pages all need careful thought. The consent checker shows what loads before and after a visitor's choice; the findings are potential technical risks, not a legal assessment.
Automated accessibility scans find many, but not all, problems. Use the results to fix obvious barriers, then test key tasks — finding opening hours, booking, reading a page at 200% zoom — by hand. The automation section suggests common clinic workflows such as appointment reminders, pre-visit forms, recall messages and review requests.
Keeping information current
Clinic details change often: practitioners join and leave, opening hours shift for holidays, services are added. Outdated information on the website, in your structured data or in your business profile sends patients to the wrong place at the wrong time. Assign one person to review these details monthly, and run the audit again after any larger change. Use a short checklist so the review is quick: practitioner list, opening hours and holiday closures, services and prices where shown, emergency information and booking links.