Six tests, ten minutes
A dental practice website has to do six things. Everything else is optional. Each of the six has a test you can run on your own phone in about a minute, and each has a fix. Run them in order; the first three decide whether the site can produce patients at all.
1. Let a patient book in one tap
Test: open the site on your phone. Without scrolling, is there a Book button? Tap it. Do you see live appointment slots within one more tap?
Pass: slots visible in two taps from landing.
Fail looks like: the button is in a menu; it opens a contact form; it goes to a portal that asks for an account before showing availability; there is no button and the instruction is "call us".
Fix: a Book button in the header on every page linked to the booking system's live availability, treatment pre-selected where the system allows. If the practice management system's portal is poor, this is the moment to configure it properly or add a booking layer.
2. Appear in under two seconds on a phone
Test: private window, mobile data, load the home page and a treatment page. Count until the main heading and image are visible.
Pass: under two seconds both times. Confirm with Search Console's Core Web Vitals report showing Good on mobile.
Fail looks like: a white screen for three or four seconds; the layout jumping as it loads; Search Console showing Poor.
Fix: images compressed and sized for phones, the hero image prioritised, unused plugins and scripts removed, decent hosting with caching. Usually a day of technical work on a sound site; a rebuild on a heavy template.
3. Have a page for each treatment you want patients for
Test: search Google for your most valuable treatment plus your town: "dental implants [town]", "invisalign [town]". Is your site on page one with a page about that treatment? Open your site and find the implants page. Does it say what it involves, who does it, roughly what it costs, and offer a Book button?
Pass: a page per key treatment, ranking or at least indexed, answering those four questions.
Fail looks like: a single Treatments page with a list; treatment pages that are three sentences; no ranking for any treatment term.
Fix: a page per treatment, written for patients, with clinician, indicative price, FAQs and a call to action, built as structured content so the practice can maintain them.
4. Show prices
Test: as a stranger, find what a check-up and a hygiene visit cost. Time yourself.
Pass: a fees page or prices on treatment pages, found within thirty seconds, with real numbers or "from" prices, current.
Fail looks like: "contact us for prices"; a PDF from two years ago; prices only in a membership leaflet.
Fix: a fees page with prices in fields the practice manager edits; "from" where treatment varies; membership plan alongside.
5. Prove the practice is real and regulated
Test: find the dentists' photos, qualifications and registration numbers. Find a photo of the actual practice. Find the practice's regulator registration or inspection result. Find reviews.
Pass: all four within a minute.
Fail looks like: stock photos of models; a team page with names only; no registration numbers; no link to the regulator; reviews only on Google, not surfaced on the site.
Fix: a photographer for half a day; team profiles with registration numbers and Book-with buttons; regulator links; Google reviews embedded with reserved space near the booking call to action.
6. Catch what it produces, and tell you
Test: fill in the contact form. Does the email arrive, where, and how quickly does someone respond? Ask your practice manager how many bookings and enquiries the website produced last month and from which pages.
Pass: the form delivers to a monitored inbox; the practice can state last month's website bookings and enquiries by source.
Fail looks like: the form goes to a former employee; nobody knows the numbers; analytics counts visits and nothing else.
Fix: form delivery to a monitored address with a same-day response target; conversion events for booking clicks, calls and forms marked as key events; a monthly glance at landing pages by conversion.
Scoring
Six of six: the site is doing its job; spend on photography and content. Four or five: fix the failures, usually without a rebuild. Three or fewer, with 1 or 2 failing: the site is costing the practice patients every week and the fixes are worth more than they cost.
Where this sits
This checklist is what every dental practice site we build is tested against before launch, and it is the first ten minutes of a diagnosis on an existing one. Most practice sites we see fail at least three, and most of the six are fixable inside a month.