The Dental Website Conversion Checklist (40 Points)
Pete Johnson
I look at dental websites for a living. More than 1,500 of them at this point. And I can usually tell within about a minute whether a site is going to convert the traffic it gets or quietly leak it.
The frustrating part for practice owners is that the leaks are almost never obvious from the inside. The site looks fine. It has nice photos. The web company said it was "optimized." And yet a meaningful share of the people who land on it leave without booking.
So I turned the teardown I run in my head into something you can run yourself. Forty checks, eight categories, about thirty minutes. Score one point for every item your site clearly passes. At the end you will have a number and, more importantly, a prioritized list of what to fix.
This is the hands-on companion to my piece on why dental websites do not convert, which explains the why. This gives you the what, in order. Grab a pen, pull your site up on your phone, and be honest.
How to Score Your Site
Each of the forty items below is a yes or no. If your site clearly passes, give it one point. If you are not sure, it is a no, because if you have to squint, a stressed patient on their phone definitely will not pass it.
Total it at the end. Here is how to read your score:
- 35 to 40: Strong. Your site is an asset. Fine-tune the weak items.
- 25 to 34: Leaking. You are losing bookable patients to fixable problems. Prioritize.
- Under 25: Urgent. Your marketing spend is pouring into a bucket with holes. Fix the site before you spend another dollar driving traffic to it.
One rule: score it on your phone first. The majority of dental traffic is mobile, so the phone experience is the real experience.
Category 1: Above the Fold and the 5-Second Test
The first screen decides whether people stay. A visitor should know who you are, where you are, and what to do next within five seconds.
- Your practice name and what you do are clear within five seconds of landing.
- A phone number is visible and tappable in the header without scrolling.
- A clear primary call to action (book, call, request appointment) is above the fold.
- Your location or service area is obvious immediately, not buried.
- The hero communicates a reason to choose you, not just a stock smile photo.
Category 2: Navigation and the Path to Booking
Every extra click between a patient and an appointment costs you patients. The path should be obvious and short.
- Booking or contact is reachable from any page in one tap.
- Navigation labels are plain language, not clever or vague.
- A new patient can find "new patient" information without hunting.
- There are no dead ends: every key page leads toward booking.
- The path to schedule takes three clicks or fewer from the homepage.
Category 3: Service and Treatment Pages
Generic service pages do not convert and do not get found. Patients and AI engines both reward specificity.
- Your high-value procedures each have their own dedicated page, not one "Services" list.
- Each service page answers candidacy, process, and what to expect.
- Cost or financing is addressed honestly, even if it is a range or a "starting at."
- Each service page has its own clear call to action.
- Pages are written in plain patient language, not clinical jargon. The standard to aim for is in the perfect Invisalign landing page.
Category 4: Trust Signals
Choosing a dentist is an act of trust. Your site has to earn it fast, with proof, not adjectives.
- Real reviews or testimonials are visible on the homepage, not hidden on a reviews page.
- Your Google rating and review count are shown and current.
- Real photos of your actual team and office, not stock imagery.
- Provider bios with credentials and a human, approachable tone.
- Trust markers (associations, awards, years in practice) are present and specific.
Category 5: Speed and Core Web Vitals
A slow site loses patients before they ever see it. Speed is a conversion factor and a ranking factor, and most dental sites fail it.
- Your homepage loads in under three seconds on a phone on cellular data.
- Images are compressed and sized for the web, not giant raw uploads.
- The page does not jump around as it loads (no layout shift while tapping).
- You have run your site through Google PageSpeed Insights and know your scores.
- Your mobile PageSpeed score is in the green, or you have a plan to get it there. The stakes are in why PageSpeed is costing you patients.
Category 6: Mobile Experience and Click-to-Call
Most patients meet your practice on a phone. If the mobile experience is an afterthought, so is your conversion rate.
- Tapping the phone number actually dials, on every page.
- Buttons and tap targets are big enough to hit with a thumb.
- Text is readable without pinching or zooming.
- No pop-up covers the screen the instant a mobile visitor arrives.
- Forms are easy to complete on a small screen.
Category 7: Forms, Chat, and Conversion Friction
Every field and every extra step is friction. The goal is the shortest honest path from interested to booked.
- Your appointment or contact form asks only for what you truly need.
- The form confirms submission clearly and tells the patient what happens next.
- If you use chat, it is genuinely helpful and quick, not an annoying loop.
- Online scheduling is offered for patients who would rather not call.
- Form and call submissions are tracked, so you know what is actually converting. The how is in my guide on attribution.
Category 8: Is Your Site Readable by AI and Booking Agents?
This is the 2026 category most checklists do not have yet. AI assistants and booking agents increasingly read your site to answer patients and act for them. If they cannot parse it, you are invisible in the places patients now look.
- Key facts (services, hours, insurance, location) are in real text, not locked inside images.
- Your site uses clear structured data identifying your practice, services, and reviews.
- Core content is visible without requiring a click, hover, or script to load.
- Your most important pages answer the literal questions patients ask, in plain language.
- Booking and contact are reachable as plain links an agent can follow, not trapped behind complex widgets.
Your Score and the Three Fixes to Make First
Add it up. Now resist the urge to fix everything at once, because that is how nothing gets fixed.
Look at your lowest-scoring category and pick the three single items that sit closest to the money. In my experience the highest-leverage fixes are almost always the same three: make the phone number tappable and obvious everywhere, get your real reviews and real photos visible above the fold, and get your mobile load time into the green. Those three move conversion more than a full redesign for most practices.
Here is the mindset that matters more than any single check. A website does not generate patients by existing. It generates patients by removing every reason a ready-to-book person might hesitate or bounce. Every "no" on this list is one of those reasons, sitting there costing you appointments you already paid to attract. That is the same argument I make in you do not have a new patient problem: the leak is usually closer to the booking than to the top of the funnel.
Run this quarterly. Sites drift, plugins break, and what passed last year fails against this year's expectations and this year's AI parsing.
If you want me to run my full version of this teardown on your site and show you the leaks you cannot see from the inside, request a free competitive analysis and mention "website audit." I will score it the way I score the 1,500 before it, and hand you the prioritized fix list.
The traffic is the expensive part. Converting it is the cheap part. Most practices have it backward.
Go deeper: More from the Practice Growth hub: conversion, attribution, and turning marketing spend into booked chairs.
Sources
- Google: Core Web Vitals and page experience: Google, documentation on the speed and stability metrics that affect both ranking and user experience
- Think with Google: mobile page speed and bounce rates: Google, research showing how the probability of a bounce rises sharply as mobile load time increases
- Baymard Institute: form usability and checkout/conversion research: Baymard Institute, research on how form length and friction reduce completion and conversion
- Nielsen Norman Group: web usability and trust: Nielsen Norman Group, evidence-based guidance on navigation, trust, and how users scan pages
- BrightLocal: Local Consumer Review Survey: BrightLocal, data on how reviews and online trust signals influence consumer choice of local providers
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