Healthcare
62%
of bookings now online
Northgate Dental
A three-site dental group with an inaccessible website and a phone line that rang out. Now bookable online, at AA.
- WCAG 2.1 AA
- Online booking
- Plain language
Healthcare & clinics
People arrive worried. Don't make them work
A patient looking for a specialist wants to know you treat their condition, that you're covered by their insurance, and how soon they can be seen. Three answers, findable in seconds, written without jargon.
Healthcare & Clinics
AA
WCAG 2.1 conformance
Verified, not assumed.
4–7
Weeks, typical build
Clinic site with booking.
0%
Forms with documented handling
Storage, access, retention.
Context
Healthcare and clinic website design
Healthcare sites carry a weight most don't. Someone reading yours may be anxious, in pain, or making a decision for a parent. Clever design that prioritises mood over clarity actively fails them.
The things patients look for are consistent: do you treat this condition, are you covered by my insurance, who is the clinician, where are you, and when can I be seen. Those answers should be one click from anywhere, in plain language, at a text size someone reads comfortably.
Accessibility isn't optional here — your patient population includes people with low vision, motor impairments, and cognitive load from illness or medication. We build to WCAG 2.1 AA as a floor. And any form touching health information gets its handling documented: where it goes, who can read it, how long it's kept.
The hard parts
What healthcare sites get wrong
Every sector has its own set. Naming them up front is how a brief stops being a wish list.
Clinical language
Patients search for symptoms in everyday words. A site written in medical terminology is both harder to read and invisible to the searches patients actually type.
Forms handling health data casually
A symptom description in a contact form is health information. Emailed to an inbox with no documented retention or access control, that's a real compliance problem.
Accessibility as an afterthought
Low contrast, unlabelled fields, and keyboard traps exclude a meaningful share of the very patients the clinic exists to serve.
Booking that isn't really booking
A form that says someone will call back within two business days is not a booking. Patients with an urgent concern go to whoever can see them sooner.
No visible clinicians
Patients choose a person, not a practice. Stock photography and no clinician profiles undermines exactly the trust the site needs to build.
Our answer
How we handle it
01
Plain language, patient-first
Conditions described the way patients describe them, with the clinical term alongside. Better for comprehension and for search at the same time.
02
Documented data handling
Any form carrying health information gets a documented path: where it's stored, who can access it, retention period, and encryption. Written down before it's built.
03
WCAG 2.1 AA as the floor
Contrast verified numerically, full keyboard operation, labelled fields with real error messages, and a screen-reader pass on every interactive element.
04
Real availability where possible
Integrated with your practice management system so patients see genuine slots. If integration isn't available, we're explicit about response times rather than vague.
05
Clinicians front and centre
Profiles with credentials, specialisms, languages spoken, and their own booking link. Photography specced even when we're not shooting it.
What we run here
Services that fit Healthcare
Not every service suits every sector. These are the ones that earn their keep in yours.
Proof
Projects in this sector
With the numbers, the timeline, and the parts that went sideways.
Two agencies told us accessibility was a checkbox at the end. Quesiono treated it as the brief. Every colour was checked before it went into the palette. We passed our AA audit first time, which for a three-practice group with a patient base like ours matters more than how the homepage looks.
Further reading
Related notes from the journal
SEO9 min read
Local SEO: How to Show Up When Someone Nearby Is Searching
The map pack is where local demand lives. Here's how it's ranked, what to fix first, and the review process that quietly does most of the work.
Read itWeb Design8 min read
Nine UX Principles That Actually Move Conversion
Not a list of best practices. Nine specific patterns we've measured, with the numbers we saw and the two that didn't work.
Read itWeb Design9 min read
How to Build a Website That Converts: A Practical Guide
Most sites that fail to convert aren't ugly. They're unclear. Here's the sequence we follow, and the specific things we measure at each step.
Read itQuestions
Healthcare, answered
We build the site to handle protected health information correctly and we'll sign a BAA where our services touch it. Full HIPAA compliance covers your whole organisation — training, policies, physical safeguards — not just the website, so we'd rather be precise about our part than claim to certify yours. We'll walk through the data flow with you before writing any code.
Other sectors
We also work in
Next step
Building for Healthcare?
Tell us the goal and the constraints. We'll tell you what it takes, what it costs, and what we'd do first.
Rather write first?hello@quesiono.com— we reply within one business day.