As 2022 was drawing to a close I was approached by the good people at MedCentres to discuss cloning their exiting website to use for their new Robina location that was under construction.
Although the request was to clone a existing website from their other practice and swapping out content, I knew right away that this path was not the best way forward for their clients, or their business.
The Problem
Their internal marketing team who were maintaining and editing the old website had been bitten a few times when using a visual builder interface.
Under the hood the content structure was basically a junk draw of content; doctors mixed with services, mixed with pages, mixed with locations etc. Not the ideal way to build websites in 2023, but for the majority of website of it’s vintage, and the only way to do it with WordPress out of the box.
The Solution
Updating or adding new content shouldn’t mean that site editors risk breaking the design of their website. The new site is built so the team can add a new doctor and have that doctor appear on all the relevant areas without further agency engagement. Connecting doctors to services or vice versa is a breeze… pages almost build themselves.
Structured data to set the foundation
Categorised data in the form of custom post types was what the doctor ordered (pun intended), with the special source being ‘relationships’ between them.
A centralised location was created to the admin team manage all of the businesses details like contact details, social media links and opening hours and many other global site elements.
Website features:
- Logical and SEO friendly site architecture with accessible semantic markup (more important and rare than you think).
- A central location for all medical practise details. Phone number change? No problem, update in one place and it changes on every page.
- Update key sections of the website without having to touch the page builder.
- Site wide notice popup that can be activated by a toggle on settings admin page.
- Easy to create Doctor pages that can be connected to services the doctor provides, and a template that dynamically adapts to suit the content added by an editor.
- Optimised lean code output shaving megabytes in page download size compared to their previous website. Better visitor experience by way of faster page loads and helps with search rankings.