Hey there! Chris here from Aeva AI Receptionist for Healthcare.
A mate sent me a link last week. "Isn't this your site?"
It wasn't. It was one of our copycats.
Same headlines. Same layout. Whole sections lifted sentence for sentence. The only thing they'd changed was the logo in the corner and the colours.
I'll be honest, my first reaction was to laugh. The second was something closer to chuffed. People only tend to copy the companies leading.
But that's not actually what stuck with me.
When two websites look the same
What stuck with me is something a lot of clinic owners deal with too.
Walk down most high streets and you'll find two or three practices in the same field, with websites that look identical to patients. Similar stock photo of a smiling practitioner with a patient. Same list of services. Same "book now" button.
If you want to fix one thing on your own site this week, make it your photos. A real one of you or your team, not a stock model who's never set foot in your clinic.
The pro version of that tip? Thirty seconds of video beats even that. Just you, talking normally, saying who you are and what you treat.
But even a great photo or video won't settle it once two practices both look legitimate. Patients can't tell you apart on looks alone either. So what else actually decides it?
What I hear from top clinic owners, is a short list, and none of it is the website.
Reviews, especially the recent ones. Not the star rating by itself. Whether the last few sound like a real person wrote them, and whether you bothered replying to the one bad review instead of ignoring it.
Who referred them. A GP referral or a mate's recommendation beats any website on the internet. If someone they trust already vouches for you, the comparison's over before it starts.
How soon you can actually see them. Someone in pain rarely chooses on branding. They choose whoever can get them in this week, not the practice with the nicer font.
Whether the phone gets answered. Two practices, same-looking website. A patient rings both. One books them in on the spot, the other goes to voicemail. There's no contest, and the homepage never came into it.
A secret new feature.
None of the five things above are flashy. A real photo, reviews, referrals, availability, actually picking up the phone.
It's also the thinking behind something new we're launching in the coming weeks.
If the website page itself was never going to convince anyone, why wait for a visitor to pick up the phone at all? We're working on a version of Aeva that sits right on the website.
Not another boring chat-bot. Something that looks and feels natural. So much so that a patient actually wants to use it, striking up a real conversation on the page and elegantly reassuring them that you're the right choice over the clinic down the road.
We are still a few weeks away. But I can’t wait for you to try it.
Every call counts,
Chris Baxter
founder, Aeva AI Receptionist for healthcare
P.S. I'd love to hear your AI receptionist stories this week. Hit reply and tell me the most recent. I read every one.
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