The Official VisionWeb Blog

Word of mouth, peer to peer referrals are often the cheapest and best form of advertising that your eyecare practice can receive. While many people look to the Internet when it comes to finding new businesses and healthcare providers in their area, others turn to friends and family for a more trustworthy recommendation. How do you thank your patients for sending new referrals to your practice?

Before implementing a referral program in your practice we suggest reaching out to your state board in order to get the details on any legal requirements for running this program in your state or reach out to a business lawyer if you still have questions.

Whether you're aware of it or not, color can play a big role in your buying decisions. In fact, we saw this statistic that said 52% of people don't return to a store because they don't like the store's aesthetics. This means you need to be aware of the colors associated with your brand and the colors you use in and around your office. They could play a part in whether a patient schedules an appointment with your practice, or makes a purchase in your optical shop.

Today we thought it would be fun to take a look at how different colors affect perception and purchasing habits. In your practice it could be the color of your sign out front, the colors used in a print ad, or the colors on the walls in your office that play a role in patients making a purchase decision. 

You can promote your eyecare practice all you want, but typically the strongest and most successful types of promotion will come from your current patients and their word of mouth recommendations to their friends and family. Without overtly asking for patients to post reviews or share stories on social media there are ways you can encourage your patients to do this on their own throughout your office.

Creating fun areas in your dispensary where patients can take selfies or have photos taken of them when trying on their new frames is a great way to beef up your marketing. Patients will be likely to share their photos on their own social media pages, and you will have pictures on hand of patients wearing your frames. Here are a few ideas for creating picture-worthy spaces in your optical shop.

We wrote an article overviewing the most common questions that our sales team gets asked during software demos. While we were getting together the most common questions, we were also able to comprise some of the uncommon questions. This will give you a little more insight into the Uprise software and will help you brainstorm different types of questions to ask during any of your next software demos.

How many patients do you see in your eyecare practice on a regular day? 15? 20? It can be easy to get caught up with your busy schedule that you start to neglect some of the business aspects of your eyecare practice. It takes a lot of time to manage your staff, stay on top of your financials, and implement marketing strategies. If you're a smaller independent practice, a lot of the business responsibilities could be falling on your shoulders.

Today we want to take a quick break from patient care and really think about the business side of things. When was the last time you looked at certain metrics? Do you know what all the financial terms mean when looking at different numbers? We pulled together ten business terms and phrases that are relevant to practices today that you should make sure that you know, and also understand how to apply them in your practice.