Doctors consistently rank at the top of the list when pollsters ask the question: “Which profession do you trust the most?”
Can we learn something from how they do business?
First, let’s imagine this situation:
You have had a pain in your chest for a couple of days now and you decide to go to the doctor. You make an appointment and arrive on time. After a few minutes in the waiting room, the nurse shows you into an examination room.
After a few more minutes the doctor walks in. She immediately launches into a description of the various treatment options she offers and why they are better than the alternatives. After completing her explanation, she leaves you with her business card and some pamphlets that further describe her treatments.
Inconceivable, isn’t it? A doctor who asks no questions, doesn’t take a history, performs no diagnostic tests.
Yet this is exactly what happens when visitors (patients) land on the web site of many companies (the doctor). Visitors may not even be sure that they have a problem before the web site is describing the merits of its product and why it’s better than the other guy’s.
How could it be different?
A web site could let the visitor perform a self-diagnosis and then direct the visitor to pages relevant to the diagnostic questions. For visitors that aren’t knowledgeable about the area where they have a problem, the site could point them to pages that educate. For visitors that are thinking about the treatment you offer (your product or service), the site could provide lots of detail about how it works, who has used it in the past, and the results they got.
Doctors are trained to be aware of where the patient is in their journey toward solving a problem. If the patient is at the beginning of their journey, the doctor starts there. If the patient is further along, then the doctor helps patients evaluate treatment options or what to expect when the treatment is done.
The point is that the doctor is constantly going back and forth between focus on the patient’s journey and the diagnostic/treatment process.
It’s possible to design web sites that take this approach, but only when owners of sites turn their attention to focus both on their treatment (sales) process and on the patient’s (visitor’s) journey.
A big reason we trust doctors is that they seem to genuinely be interested in helping us to solve our problem. Can your website do the same thing for your visitors and future customers?
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