Are you a cookie-cutter practice without any personality?
Or, are you different and better with a story that compels
visitors to want to become patients?
Our website team will be personally involved in your project.
Your website will look and sound like nothing else in your market.
No hassles included. We only need an hour of your time across 4 weeks.
TNT has been nominated for & won several awards for our custom designs.
Expect complete honesty with your best interests always at heart.
Many companies try to do it all. TNT is 100% focused on dentistry.
Your Project Manager is here for you through phone, text or email.
Rest assured your website is on our secure servers with 99.8% reliability.
Built to Google's standards regarding mobile-responsiveness & SEO.
"I love working at TNT Dental as a writer. I get the opportunity to tell amazing stories in an awesome team-driven atmosphere."
Our talented team collaborates to create the best possible product for our clients.
Our efforts mirror the world of dentistry. Most of our websites are for general dentists. At the same time, we have been very successful helping hundreds of specialists build websites customized to the unique characteristics of their practices.
Our entire philosophy is based on value. We are not the lowest price option, and we do not want to be. If price is all that matters, quit being a dentist. Do you want patients who select you only because you have the lowest fees in town?
If value and investing in your future are important, TNT Dental is the right place for you. Our completely custom websites are an incredible value. Others charge anywhere from $7,000 to $12,000 for what we do.
In addition, we keep our fees simple and easy to understand:
This gets you everything you need (and more) for a single location practice with 1 or 2 dentists. We write all the content, do all the custom designs and program everything using the latest, mobile-friendly technology.
This gets you a 1-day photo & video shoot in your practice with our in-house team of videographers. We use the content from that day to customize your website and produce an initial batch of 3-4 videos.
There are not any with TNT unless you have multiple locations or a group practice with 3 or more dentists. If you are one of these select few, we will discuss what is best for you and what it will cost.
This is the best website company I have ever worked with. They built a completely custom site for my practice (My Frederick Dentist) that is amazing and is getting attention of the community. My new patient numbers have gone up from 5 in April to over 27 last month and it has only been half a year with them. The site is affordable, and the custom videos are completely professional produced and edited. I would highly recommend this company, at least talking with them first to see if they fit your needs and looking at some of their amazing work.
Dr. Cyrus Allafi
If you are one of those people who likes to research every aspect of something before making a decision, this is your utopia. We have put together the 3 reference guides listed to provide the definitive resource document. We know our current clients liked having these as a resource, and we hope you do too. Of course, we welcome the opportunity to answer your specific questions as well.
Unfortunately, most dental website companies employ a lot of salespeople. Very often, they are more focused on making the sale and collecting their commission than they are the long-term success of your practice. In fact, you will rarely ever speak with them again after the sale.
As a result, it is extremely difficult to sort through the various promises and to make an objective decision on which website is best for your practice. It is a challenge to identify the false promises. The salespeople are experts at answering questions in a certain way and at redirecting your attention away from weaknesses in what they do – without you realizing it.
At TNT, things are different. 90% of our business comes from referrals, and one of our Founders, Tim Kelley, is our salesperson. His goal is to help determine whether or not you and your practice will be a good fit at TNT. We would rather part ways as friends than sell you something that will not help you achieve your long-term goals.
With this in mind, we have prepared a list of 8 elements that should absolutely, positively be included in any website you purchase. . . whether it is from TNT or another company. Use this list as a guide to ensure you select the best website for your dental practice, and do not hesitate to give Tim a call if there is anything we can do to help you through this process.
If your practice is a template and just like every other dental practice in town, you should select a templated website. If you are unique and provide an exceptional experience delivered by amazing people, make the investment in a custom website that tells your story.
It should feature high-quality, custom photos of you, your team, your practice and your patients. Custom video is a great option that immediately differentiates you from your competition and builds a direct connection with website visitors.
Whether using custom photos or video, the opening screen should clearly communicate the 3 or 4 features that make your practice different (and better) than others in your area. You have 3 to 5 seconds to make the first impression. It should be a powerful and memorable one.
Most importantly, your website should include 100% custom content written by professional, dental writers. This content is important to telling your story. At the same time, this content is critical to getting found on the first page of Google search results. Most dental website companies talk about “semi-custom” content or write 1 or 2 pages of custom content while the rest of your content is selected from a library of pre-written, generic stuff. Duplicate and “semi-custom” content is ignored by Google and is like having a blank page in your website.
At TNT, we offer 100% custom content for every page of your website – usually more around 7,000 words – and this is included in our high-value, flat-fee.
Our feeling is that you have more important (and valuable) things – like a crown prep – to do than to attempt to build a do-it-yourself dental website. That is why we do all of the heavy lifting – from design to writing to programming – while always respecting your most valuable asset, your time.
Certainly, there are many ways to build a website. However, we have found great inconsistency across many of our competitors. This is why we are happy to share our process. When you decide to work with TNT, you will know what to expect. Even if you do not work with us, you will have a roadmap to follow; a process that allows you to transform about 2 hours of your time into an amazing, custom website. Here is how it works:
As detailed above, the design of your website should be exclusively for you. It should be based on you, your practice and your vision. Never allow the company creating your website to start with a generic template, and ask to speak directly with the designer to ensure your design is not outsourced. Also, ask for proof of the awards they have received and compare 10 to 12 of their “custom” websites. Do they all look the same?
At TNT, we are proud to have been recognized as the Marketer of the Year by the American Marketing Association, and we consistently make the list of Best Dental Websites. Most importantly, our designs are based on what we know works. . . what we know helps convert website visitors into new patients for your practice.
Of all 8 factors to consider, this one might be the easiest. If you are paying less than $3,000 for your website, you are not getting a 100% custom website. You are getting a templated design with generic content. How “custom” your website is will depend on the abilities of the salesperson to deceive you, not the actual work done to build your website.
For between $3,000 and $5,000, you can get a website that includes custom content. However, TNT is the only company that also includes a custom design within this price range. Everyone else works off sets of templates that make your website look and feel like hundreds of others
At somewhere around $7,000, you can start to get a fully-custom website that includes design, content and mobile-friendly development. These fees still might not include custom photos and custom video, but you should be able to get a website that tells your story and clearly differentiates you from the competition.
All of this information is what makes us confident we offer the highest-value websites in dentistry. When you compare apples-to-apples (and are not misled by the fast-talking salespeople), there is no comparison for our $3,200 and $5,200 price points.
This is a big one. In most cases, you will have to make a choice between a local agency that works with hundreds of different businesses – from restaurants to muffler shops to veterinarians – or a big, national company that focuses only on dentistry.
If you go the local route, you will have to teach them the business of dentistry as they create your website. In addition, their proposal might even “allow” you to write your own content. This could sound cool at the start. Once you get to word 3,002 (with another 4,000 to go), the “cool factor” decreases dramatically.
If you go the big, national route, be aware. You are just a number in their roll-up operation. In almost all cases, they are no longer focused on just dentistry. Their investors have forced them to expand into other healthcare segments, and you will be selecting from a pre-set menu of options for your photos and written content.
At TNT, we have been in the business of dentistry for more than 20 years. We know as much about the clinical and business aspects of successful dental practices as we know about website design, search optimization and Facebook advertising. It is all we do, and we look forward to incorporating that expertise into your new website.
It takes a team to build the best websites in dentistry. At the same time, you should not have to waste time getting everyone on the same page. You should expect to have a single point of contact who coordinates everything. From the initial interview to the final launch, you should be able to communicate via text, email and phone – at times convenient for you and your practice – with a single person who has the authority and resources to get stuff done.
At the same time, it is equally important for you to have a single person at your practice in charge of the project. One of the biggest, potential sources of frustration in building a website is a Monday Morning Quarterback. Often, this is the dentist who is “too busy” to get involved from the start. Or, it is a spouse or consultant who does not share any feedback until the website is ready to launch. This is not fair. It is not efficient. And, it is not smart.
Get all of the decision-makers engaged from the beginning. Let them know. If they stay involved, their input will help tremendously. However, Monday Morning Quarterbacks are better left as spectators.
This is the stuff that makes a huge difference but is almost always overlooked. In many ways, building a website is like dentistry. It is very hard for patients to tell the clinical quality of your work. Likewise, it is very hard for you to measure the technical expertise of your website.
As a result, there are some fundamental components that just need to be there. You may not fully understand why, but they are not optional. If a company tries to convince you they are not important, run. Do not walk. Run to another company that knows what they are doing.
Around 60% of all traffic to dental websites arrives via mobile devices. As a result, the look, feel and function of your website on an iPhone is actually more important than how it works on a desktop computer. When you are shown design mock-ups, you should see both the desktop and mobile versions of your custom design.
Also, there are considerations that are more than skin deep. To start, you need a mobile-responsive structure that allows your website to render on all browsers and screen sizes. Of equal importance, the content of your website must be optimized for mobile devices. And, the calls-to-action (buttons that convert visitors into patients) are completely different on mobile than they are on desktop.
It used to be the mobile version of your website was just a scaled-back version of your desktop version. That can no longer be the case. Today, the standard is to develop the entire mobile strategy for your website first. Then, this strategy is translated to the desktop version. This approach is critical for both the user experience and for search engine optimization.
As you can see, there are a lot of things to consider when developing a new website. It may be your nature to ask all these questions and to monitor all these factors yourself. Or, it might be your style simply to select a company you can trust to handle everything for you. Either way, our hope is this comprehensive explanation of the components to consider provides a useful road map for you and your team.
Over the past 20 years, we have built thousands of custom websites for dentists. In addition, we have studied how patients interact with these websites. We have developed heat zone maps and click counts for millions of website visits. We have held in-person focus groups, and we have tracked click-thru and conversion rates. We have A/B tested hundreds of different photos, headlines, button designs and color combinations.
Plain and simple, we know what works.
Following is a detailed look at the 10 critical components of effective dental websites. These are the difference makers. These are the features that empower websites for dentists to accomplish their 2 primary objectives; convert visitors into patients and serve as the foundation of your SEO.
You have 3 to 5 seconds to capture the attention of someone visiting your website. The initial image they see will is a pass – fail test. If they are engaged by what they see, they will spend more time getting to know you. If not, they will hit the back arrow button and continue their search on the websites of your competitors.
Does a generic photo of a stock art family tell your story? Does it differentiate you from the other dentists in your area? Does it appeal to a 35 to 55 year-old female who is looking for a caring professional to take care of her family?
Think of the one image that captures the essence of your practice. Would a video be better at positioning you as the high-tech practice? Personalizing your story? What about the quality and clarity of the photo? If you do not take the time to get this right, it sends an strong message to potential patients that you do not pay attention to the little things.
That opening screen is what every visitor to your website sees immediately. It is how they form their first impression of you and your practice. They have decided what you are all about before they scroll an inch or read a word.
Most importantly, do not think the “big opening” only affects the people searching for a new dentist on the Internet. It impacts every potential, new patient. Even referrals from your best, current patients will go to your website. If this image does not support what they have heard, they may begin to doubt the referral. Is this really the right place for me?
Today’s world is fast-paced. People are busy. They draw conclusions quickly and move on. Photos and videos are worth way more than a thousand words. Make sure the first image visitors see on your website tells your story, differentiates you from your competition and engages. You win if they decide to spend more time on your website. You lose (and never get another chance) if they do not like what they see.
This is simple. The look, feel and function of your website on a mobile device is more impactful than how it functions on a desktop. More than 60% of all visits to dental websites are on mobile devices, and every website should have full mobile responsiveness.
This means it is designed to tell your story and engage visitors on every web browser on every device – regardless of screen size and orientation. The technology is there to make this possible. You website company just needs to use it.
At the same time, mobile-friendliness is more than skin deep. It also means the content on your website must be structured properly. The words on your website must be organized in a way that is easy for Google to index, and they must be presented in a way that is easy for people to find. This is a big change from only a few years ago.
Google used to base its search results on the content included in the desktop version of your website. As a result, many companies would scale-back the amount of content included on the mobile version of your website. The thought was this made things faster to load and easier to navigate. In 2016, this was true.
Today, this is a serious mistake. Now, Google scans and indexes only the mobile version of your website. They do not even look at the desktop version. If the mobile version of your website “hides” a bunch of images and content, Google will never see them. And, your chances of getting on the first page of Google search results will take a direct hit.
While getting lots of visitors to your website is exciting and looks good on a colorful, monthly report from your Internet marketing company, converting these visitors into actual patients is way more important. This is what we call “butts in the chairs”, and this starts – and ends – with clear calls to action.
This means that your phone number and a “Request an Appointment” button should always be visible on your dental website. Whether a visitor is on your homepage or your “Meet the Dentist” page, these two options for conversion should be locked in place and noticeable. You never want a website guest more than one click away from becoming your next, new patient.
The biggest mistake with calls to action is not having them locked in place. If these features are in the header of your website, your header should be fixed. It should not scroll. If they are fixed on the side of your screen, no problem. Keep them there.
Likewise, we recommend these conversion buttons to be locked at the bottom of every mobile design. Mobile designs will require lots of scrolling to get to your content, however, this “action bar” should never move. This is in the “swipe zone” for people’s thumbs, and placement of the buttons here will generate significantly more clicks (and patients) than if they are anywhere else on the screen. It is true. Watch how people use their phones. Try to reach another part of the screen with your own thumbs. Common sense – and lots of research – proves it.
As presented in the “big opening” section, there is nothing more important than custom photos and videos. Your success is founded on people trusting you. How can they trust you if they cannot see you? Do you really want your dental school graduation photo to be their only view of the dentist they are going to select for a $30,000 smile makeover? If your practice offers a team of experts, why can’t they get together for a nice photo?
The simple fact is the inability of your competitors to pose for high-quality photos gives you the opportunity to differentiate yourself. Pick custom photos over stock photos, and you will already look more professional than 70% of the other dentists in your market.
And, it is definitely worth the investment. For less than the value of a single, new patient, every dentist can get studio-quality photos and videos and make them the centerpiece of their website. These images are the first impression you are giving to patients. Make them amazing!
If you need more encouragement, consider a couple of facts.
Less than 16% of all dental websites feature custom photos exclusively, and less than 11% include custom video. Patients will immediately notice the difference. Let your competitors use the stock photos of the middle-aged, “dental implant couple” on the beach. You can simply and easily feature your own patients, your own team and your own practice.
After your homepage, this is the 2nd most-visited page on your website. How does it look? Does it feature your professional accomplishments and education? Does it provide interesting insights and anecdotes? Does it allow patients to connect with you personally?
Do not underestimate the importance of this page. There is a reason it has a lot of traffic. Prospective patients want to know about you – the dentists they are selecting. This page helps them have confidence in that decision.
As mentioned above, it should start with custom photos and videos. Just think how different you would be from everyone else if your “Meet the Dentist” page featured a short video with you thanking patients for considering your office, telling them a little more about yourself and directly inviting them to come in and meet you. Check the websites of your 10 closest competitors. Our research shows no more than 1 or 2 of them will have such a video.
Also, do not forget your patients have no idea how to evaluate the quality of your dentistry. Sure, sharing your credentials is a must. However, more than half of patients select their dentist based on non-clinical factors. This starts with the type of person you are. Are you a mom with kids of your own? Do you love hunting and fishing? Volunteer at the pet shelter in town? Coach a little league baseball team?
These are the opportunities for you to make a connection with potential patients. These attributes are often more important than the latest symposium you attended, and they are definitely more real. Make sure you share them – along with some current photos of you, your friends and your family.
Like the “Meet the Dentist” page, the “Meet the Team” page is not optional. Patients spend more time with your staff than they do with you, and they want to get to know these people. Patients want to look at their faces, judge their character and see if they are the type of people who can be trusted to “put fingers and pointy tools” in their mouths.
During our focus groups, no page generates more discussion. Patients immediately question a dental website without a “Meet the Team” page. Is the staff not trained properly? Is there high turnover? Patients wonder about the quality of dentists who are reluctant to feature the other people on their team. It would be like the coach of a team taking all the credit for himself without recognizing his players.
Do not fool yourself. Patients are smart and intuitive. They notice these “little” things, and they make decisions accordingly. Do not try to cut corners or save money by not investing in a well-developed page featuring professional photos of your team along with in-depth introductions that help patients start building a relationship.
More than 50% of patients have dental insurance. If your practice is an in-network provider with any insurance plans, your website should state this loud and clear. Even if you are a fee-for-service practice, it is still quite likely insurance plays a significant role in your success. Prospective and current patients want to know this and understand how you will work with them to understand and maximize their benefits.
When thinking of how to present dental insurance on your website, think of 3 things:
Targeting valuable niches (and winning the related searches) is one of the hallmarks of successful Internet marketing. Including relevant dental insurance information on your website is exactly this type of opportunity.
If including insurance content on your website makes sense, the same thought process extends to the clinical services offered by your dental practice. In fact, it is even more important, and there are multiple angles to consider.
As a starting point, you must understand the role content pages serve within your website. Creating individual pages dedicated to topics such as “dental implants”, “porcelain veneers” and “emergency dentistry” are the only way to win searches related to these topics. Your pages must establish you as an expert on each subject (in Google’s eyes), and these pages must provide useful information to potential patients. We recommend at least 500 words of custom content – along with custom photos and graphics – on each of these pages.
This brings us to the second consideration for service pages. The content must be 100% custom. Most website companies offer a library of “semi-custom” content that is shared by all their customers. This is not custom. Every word should be written exclusively for your practice and tell your story. If the same, “semi-custom” words are found on multiple websites, it is deemed “duplicate content” by Google and is ignored by their search algorithms.
At the end of the day, most patients will land on the homepage of your website. However, there is a subset of “big treatment plan” searches that will not find you without custom services content. These are the searches for the high-value procedures such as “All-on-4”, “smile makeover” and “Chao Pinhole Technique”. Regularly winning just a few of these searches is often what stands between a good month and a great month of production.
Aside from your website, your Google My Business (GMB) page is the most significant component of your Internet presence. It is critical to establishing yourself as a “local” business within the Google universe, and it must be fully-integrated and consistent with your website.
This starts with the set-up and claiming of the page. There are more than 50 questions that must be answered – correctly – and your website must be properly linked within your GMB page. In addition, the location pin for your practice needs to be accurate as it impacts Google searches and GPS directions. Last but not least, the page has to be officially verified.
Along with the direct impact your GMB page has on potential patients finding you via the Internet, it serves as the repository for your most valuable patient reviews. Even though Yelp tries to convince you otherwise every time they bother you, people trust your GMB reviews more than any other source on the Internet. A seamless integration that allows patients to read your GMB reviews and makes it easy for them to leave reviews on your GMB page is critical.
Even if you do everything right and have an amazing website, the strength of the reviews on your GMB page will have a huge impact on the flow of new patients into your practice.
Let’s face it. This is where you have no chance of knowing whether or not you are getting treated fairly. Just like a patient cannot tell the difference between the quality of one implant system versus another, you have no idea whether or not the technical underpinnings of your website are what they need to be.
This is where trust comes into play. And, having a little knowledge of what questions to ask cannot hurt. Then, you have to trust your gut. The best dental website companies will be honest and transparent. They will provide specific, detailed answers to your questions.
Some of the technical infrastructure that is not optional includes:
At TNT, the answer is yes. At other companies, do not be so sure – regardless of what the salesperson promises. Because 100% of the content we create for your website is customized for your practice, it is yours. Once you have paid for it, you can do anything you want with it. You can use it for practice brochures and other advertisements. You can even take it with you in the unlikely case you ever decide to leave TNT.
4 weeks. That is our goal, and we are 100% confident of achieving this goal – as long as you are willing and able to do your part. We break the process down into four, easy steps – each requiring about 30 minutes of your time – and we do all the heavy lifting in the meantime. The fact that our entire team of writers, designers, developers and project managers work side-by-side in our Richardson, TX office makes it efficient for us to create a 100% custom website in less time than most companies take to create a boilerplate template.
No. However, we can. While WordPress is far and away the most popular platform for building small business websites, we do not believe it is the best. A little perspective helps you understand why.
WordPress was created so that non-technical people (mainly writers and designers) could create websites. It accomplished this goal. However, TNT is one of the only companies making websites for dentists that has its own team of HTML and CSS developers. This allows us to make websites that are customized, faster and less clunky. All significant benefits to you.
The other risk with WordPress websites is their susceptibility to hacking. Because WordPress sites are so prevalent and put together by non-technical folks (for the most part), they are an easy target for hackers. In addition, WordPress sites rely on a huge selection of plug-ins for much of their functionality. These add-on’s increase the risk of incompatibility and open the door to breaches in website security.
All of this said, we are more than happy to build your website with WordPress, if that is what you feel is best.
Great question. Here is how we look at it. There is nothing more important to the success of your marketing efforts than your website. Think about it. It is the hub of everything you do to attract new patients.
Even if you are a fee-for-service practice that generates 100% of your new patients from referrals, these people are still going to visit your website before selecting you to become their dentist. If your website tells your story and impresses them, they will call or complete an on-line patient request. If your website is old and outdated, they will think the same of your practice and look elsewhere.
Another way to answer this question is to think about your website investment as a percentage of your overall marketing budget. A typical practice trying to attract 30 new patients per month will spend around $3,000 per month on marketing. The best dental website you can buy – with custom photos and videos included – will cost you less than $150 per month. This equates to about 5% of your overall marketing budget, and it is the best 5% you can spend.
This is why we keep our website pricing simple and easy. $3,200 gets you a great, custom website. $5,200 lets you add professional video and photos to your website. In either case, plan on these websites lasting for 3 years which means you are paying less than the cost of a cup of Starbucks a day for the most important component of your marketing efforts.
We hope not. In fact, the only thing worse than using the “semi-custom, duplicate” content provided by most of our competitors is having to write it yourself. This is why you do not want to work with a local agency that has no experience with dentistry. In such a scenario, you have two choices. . . write all the content yourself or teach them everything you learned in dental school before they write the content.
At TNT, our team of writers has written more than 50 million words about dentists, dental practices and dental procedures. No kidding. 50 million words over the past 20 years. As a result, they really know what they are doing, and they are experts at customizing this knowledge to represent the voice and personality of your practice.
The short answer is yes. The better answer is no. While our content management system (the backbone of how we build websites) does allow for mere mortals to make updates to their website, we do not encourage it. Instead, we have a team of 7 writers, designers and developers committed to making these updates for you – almost always within 24 hours.
To be honest, it keeps mistakes (and broken websites) to a minimum. Also, we often have suggestions that lead to even better updates. Most importantly, it allows you to focus on what is most valuable – taking care of your patients and doing great dentistry.
All of this said, we are happy to provide log-ins so you can make your own updates, if you just cannot do without a little technical excitement in your life.
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