Before & After photos are one of the most important elements to conversion on your medical website. B&As can give potential patients a deep look at your practice’s quality of work as well as some other key factors such as what to expect, recovery time, and more. They can also be created as an effective entry point for search users and can steer the potential patient’s buying journey to increase conversion and revenue.
What are the elements of effective B&As?
1. Consistent before and after photos
This is one of the more critical factors in developing your before and afters. In order to give your viewers an accurate view of your treatment or procedure results, it’s important that you take both the before and after in the exact same environment. Make sure each image is taken at the same location, same angle, same distance, same lighting, etc.
2. High-quality imagery
Building off the previous element, photo quality is just as important as image consistency. The goal is to ensure that your potential patients can confidently evaluate your results and make informed decisions based on that. Not only does the quality of the imagery provide assurance in the results, but it also shows your level of professionalism and attention to detail – which is exactly what you want your potential patients to feel about your practice’s ability to deliver.
4. Professional photo booth set up
This goes hand-in-hand with taking high-quality and consistent photos. In order to take achieve this, you need to have a professional set up – a small space dedicated to taking patient before and after images in a controlled environment. The photo booth should include a high-quality camera, tripod, professional lighting, and a solid-colored backdrop. Not only will this allow you to capture great B&As but it will also convey your dedication to quality.
5. Display B&As from multiple angles
Make sure you take images from every possible angle that can show the results of your work. It’s surprising how many medical websites have before and after photos for their procedures taken from only one angle. The goal should be to give your potential patients the most in-depth look into the outcome of the procedures and treatments you offer.
7. Include patient information
Without crossing any HIPAA boundaries, it’s important to accompany all pertinent information on the patient with the B&A images themselves. This includes factors like age, height, weight, and other pieces of information that would be useful for your potential patients to know. This is important so that viewers can align themselves with the most relevant results to gain a realistic idea of what to expect for patients with the most similar attributes to themselves.
8. Include procedure information
As with patient information, it’s also extremely critical to include any and all pertinent information on the procedures themselves. For example, if you’ve completed a breast augmentation, a potential patient would find it useful to know the implant type, size, profile, placement, incision, etc. This also includes other procedure information like follow-up times, healing period, and what to expect post-operation.
9. Only post great results
This should go without saying, but if your procedure yielded less than satisfactory or unimpressive results – do not post them! Your website should only display your best work. If you think a viewer will have to wonder which image is the before and which is the after photo, then maybe it’s best to leave that one off the website. Only use before and after with the highest WOW effect.
10. Watermark your photos
This is often one of the most commonly omitted steps in the process of creating and posting before and after procedure images. This is important because it protects your intellectual property by keeping other dishonest practices from claiming your B&A images themselves and the procedure’s results as their own. Not to mention it’s a free form of advertising for your practice.
11. SEO Keywords
Every piece of content on your website should be properly keyworded, this includes your photos. Doing this will always have a positive impact on your search ranking and results for the images and procedures your posting. For example, if a search user Googled “Breast augmentation before and after results” and that was the name of your image, it would be more likely to show up in the search results than an image that was named “IMG_23426.”
12. Link to procedure pages
This is an important step for two main reasons. One, there is inherent SEO value in internal linking between your website pages by establishing information hierarchy and spreading out link equity. Two, this can be a critical point to control your potential patient’s buying journey. If they are impressed by your results, you can link your B&As to the corresponding procedure page to educate them and push them further down the buying funnel.
Simple right?
Most practices don’t understand how important before and after photos are and very few, if any, realize how many critical elements should go into capturing, creating, and posting of B&As on a medical website. The good news is, the process is extremely simple to repeat once the initial setup is complete and the same steps are followed each time. This simple change can have an incredibly positive effect on patient conversion on your website and lead to a dramatic increase in revenue.
Jason Sievert
Brand Marketer
Incredible Marketing
