Check your website the way patients see it.

Many patients meet your practice on a phone first. Pick yours up, open your website, and work down this list. It takes about ten minutes, and each item says how to check it and why it matters to patients.

Updated November 2, 2026

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The first screen

Open your homepage and don’t scroll. This is what a patient sees before they decide to stay.

Your practice’s name, what you do and your town are all on the first screen.
How to check: Read the top of the page as a stranger would. “Eye exams and glasses in Hartsdale” says more than a logo and a photo.
Why it matters: Someone comparing practices on their phone decides from this screen whether they’re in the right place. Your town near the top also helps Google match you to local searches.
Your phone number is near the top, and tapping it starts a call.
How to check: Tap the number. Your phone should offer to call. If nothing happens, the number is plain text or part of a picture.
Why it matters: Calling is still how most people book. In a 2025 national study in Health Affairs Scholar, 56% of US adults said a phone call is their main way to book a medical appointment.
A booking button is on the first screen, and booking works on a phone.
How to check: Tap it and go as far as choosing a time (you don’t need to finish). Watch for pages that are hard to read on a small screen, or that ask for a password before showing any times.
Why it matters: The patients who do book online expect it to work at any hour: in Experian Health’s 2024 patient survey, 89% said being able to book online or on a phone at any time is important. If your booking only takes requests, say so, so patients know the office will confirm.

Speed

Try this on cellular data, with Wi-Fi off. That’s how a patient in a parking lot or on a lunch break sees you.

Your homepage shows its main content within 2.5 seconds on a phone.
How to check: Run your homepage through Google’s free PageSpeed Insights and read “Largest Contentful Paint” on the Mobile tab.
Why it matters: Google’s target is 2.5 seconds or less for the main content to appear, and only 62% of mobile sites meet it, according to the HTTP Archive’s 2025 Web Almanac.
Nothing jumps around while the page loads.
How to check: Reload the page and watch. Buttons and text shouldn’t move as photos, banners or chat buttons appear.
Why it matters: A page that shifts makes people tap the wrong thing. Google measures this too, as layout shift, and its target is a score of 0.1 or less.

Finding you

The practical details patients look up most, often minutes before they leave home.

Your hours are two taps away or less, and they’re right, holidays included.
How to check: Find your hours from the homepage. Compare them with the hours you actually keep this month, and check for a holiday or closure notice that’s out of date.
Why it matters: Wrong hours cost more than a lost booking: a patient who drives over to a closed door rarely gives you a second chance. Google also asks for holiday hours on your business profile, so set them in both places.
Tapping your address opens directions.
How to check: Tap the address on your site. Your phone’s map app should open with your office as the destination.
Why it matters: Patients shouldn’t have to copy an address into another app. If you have more than one office, each should have its own address and phone number.
Your name, address, phone number and hours match your Google Business Profile.
How to check: Search your practice’s name on your phone and compare the panel Google shows with your website, line by line.
Why it matters: Patients see both, and when they disagree, they don’t know which to believe. Google’s guidelines for business profiles ask for details that match how your business appears everywhere else.
You say where to park and how to get in.
How to check: Look for a line on parking, the entrance, and whether there are steps or an elevator.
Why it matters: It’s a small kindness that answers a question patients would otherwise call about, and it matters to anyone using a wheelchair or a walker.

Choosing you

Once they know where you are, patients want to know whether you’re right for them.

The vision and medical plans you accept are listed by name.
How to check: Find the list from the homepage and compare it with what your front desk accepts this year. Say if some plans cover exams but not glasses or contacts.
Why it matters: In a 2022 Vision Council survey, 46% of adults said being in their insurance network was very important when choosing where to get their last eye exam. A clear list also saves your staff the same phone call many times a week.
Each doctor has a real photo and a short bio.
How to check: Open your doctors page. Each doctor should have a current photo, their degree, and a few lines on what they focus on.
Why it matters: People choose a person, not a logo. A stock photo, or a page that still lists a doctor who has left, is noticed.
Your services are named the way patients search for them.
How to check: Look for plain names: eye exams, children’s eye exams, contact lenses, dry eye, glasses and frames, eye emergencies.
Why it matters: A patient searching for “dry eye treatment near me” can only find you if your site says you treat dry eye.
Patients can easily read what others say about you.
How to check: Look for a link to your Google reviews, or reviews patients have agreed to let you share.
Why it matters: In BrightLocal’s 2026 survey of US consumers, 97% said they read reviews of local businesses, and 74% look for reviews from the last three months. Sending patients to your real reviews is more convincing than quotes with no names.

Nothing left over

Most sites built from a template carry a few leftovers. They’re easy to miss from the inside and easy to spot from the outside.

No template text is showing anywhere.
How to check: Scroll every page on your phone. Look for “Lorem ipsum”, “Your Custom Text Here”, “New Paragraph”, “[LINK]”, “Doctor Name 1”, or words in brackets or braces.
Why it matters: Leftover text tells a visitor nobody is looking after the site. Stanford’s guidelines for web credibility warn that even small errors hurt how much people trust a site, and advise showing that its content is kept current.
No out-of-date notices are still up.
How to check: Look for COVID-19 rules, “summer hours” from another year, a move that happened long ago, or a staff member who has left.
Why it matters: An old notice makes a patient wonder what else is out of date, including your hours.
If your site shows news or articles, the newest one is recent.
How to check: Find your blog or news section and check the date on the newest post.
Why it matters: A “latest news” section that stopped years ago looks abandoned. If no one has time to write, it’s better to remove the dates or the section than to leave it frozen.

Easy to read and tap

Your patients include people with tired eyes and shaky thumbs. Accessibility standards set the floor.

You can read the text without zooming, and zooming still works.
How to check: Hold your phone at a normal distance and read a paragraph. Then pinch to zoom: the page should get bigger, not refuse.
Why it matters: WCAG, the accessibility standard the Justice Department points businesses to, asks that text can be enlarged to 200% without anything being lost.
Text stands out clearly from its background.
How to check: Read your site outside on a sunny day, or with the screen dimmed. Pale grey text and text over photos are the usual problems.
Why it matters: WCAG asks for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5 to 1 for ordinary text.
Buttons and links are big enough to tap without hitting the wrong one.
How to check: Use your thumb on the menu, the phone number and the footer links. Note anything you have to tap twice.
Why it matters: WCAG 2.2 sets a minimum target of 24 by 24 pixels, and Google’s own guidance for phone apps recommends 48 by 48, with space between.
Your contact form doesn’t ask for health details.
How to check: Open your contact or appointment request form and read each field.
Why it matters: An ordinary website form isn’t a safe place for medical information. Symptoms and history belong in your scheduling system or patient portal, which are built for it.

How Google shows you

Search your practice’s name and your town on your phone, then look at your own result.

The headline of your result names your practice and what you do.
How to check: The blue headline usually comes from your page’s title. “Eye exams in Hartsdale | Harbor Lane Eye Care” is good; “Home” is not.
Why it matters: It’s the first thing a searcher reads. Google’s advice on titles is to make each one descriptive and specific to its page.
Your site on a phone has everything your site on a computer has.
How to check: Open the same page on your phone and on a computer. Look for sections, menu items, doctors or services that only appear on the computer.
Why it matters: Google ranks your site by its phone version. Anything hidden on phones may as well not exist in search.
The text under it describes your practice, not a stock sentence.
How to check: Read the grey text below the headline. Watch for wording that could describe any practice, or a phone number with no spaces.
Why it matters: Google often builds that text from your page’s description, so a good description is your chance to say why a patient should pick you.

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