By CLICK Staff
NEW YORK – Many eyecare professionals are developing and presenting new features on their practice websites to patients, including a growing use of video, general eye health information, the ability to download practice documents or advance appointment scheduling.
But a recent survey from Jobson Research would seem to indicate that there is still a long way to go for many ECPs’ websites, despite the fact that their own personal involvement in social media has been on the upswing in the past two years.
Only 13.7 percent of a recent Jobson Research survey feel their practice website is “very sophisticated/technologically advanced”, while the majority (57.1 percent) feel their sites are “somewhere in the middle” and about 30 percent characterizing their practice website as “pretty basic/barebones.”
In a wide-ranging study, which is comparative to prior year surveys,
Jobson Research’s 2012 ECP Internet Usage Study provides a range of insights into how many eyecare professionals are using digital media. The report spans a wide range of topics, asking ECPs about their personal and professional digital media and social media participation as well as querying them about the types of digital media sites and social media groups/tools they use on a regular basis. The survey also questions ECPS about their practices’ use of online ordering (on the upswing) and their use of e-mail and social media to interact with patients.
A total of total of 485 respondents completed the Internet Usage Study in 2012. Forty-five percent were optometrists, and 43 percent were opticians, the remainder were retail managers and chain executives and others. The age range of the respondents was fairly evenly distributed among age groups. Sixty-seven percent of the respondents have been in business for 16 years or more. Sixty-four percent represented single locations, while nearly 21 percent represented groups of two or three locations and 15.1 percent had four or more locations. The study was fielded from Nov.13, 2012 to Nov. 19, 2012.
Just 15 percent of the respondents said they were updating their websites once a week or more frequently. Most were doing updates a few times a month – or less. While the majority of respondents felt they appreciated the value of their website to their overall business, only 26.9 percent were “certain” that their site was “helping their business a lot.”
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