An Advocate's Website Checklist | APHA - The Alliance of Professional Health Advocates

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As you build your new website for your advocacy practice, share this checklist with the person building your site.

It also works as a good review for an existing site, or one that is almost ready to be launched.

If you have questions about any of these points, find a list of additional resources at the bottom of the page.

Note: there are many more pages and pieces of information a website can contain. This is not meant to be an exhaustive review of websites! Instead it‘s the basics of a simple presentation – all you really need – even if there could be so much more.

Overview

Your site is a marketing website; one built specifically to encourage people to connect with you so you can have a conversation with them about hiring you. The goal is to assure them that you are possibly the right person to help. No one will hire you automatically just because you have a nice website! But a focused presentation will certainly put them in a hopeful frame of mind when they call or email you.

Be sure your site is clearly branded. Your company name (or your own name), your colors, logo, and phraseology should help your website be recognized as belonging to your brand.
Be sure your target audiences see themselves. If your work focuses on people with cancer, then talk about cancer. If your target audience is seniors, then make sure seniors are impressed that you understand them. If your audiences are more general, then keep your focus more generic so no one will feel excluded. This audience point-of-view can make or break your site.
Focus on benefits and peace-of-mind. A list of services is necessary. But the real reason someone might hire you is because they are scared, possibly angry, and very frustrated (FUDGE!), so the benefits of hiring you are about helping them achieve peace of mind. Someone (you!) can actually fix the problem! So be sure to discuss the benefits of working with you, and the peace-of-mind that will result.
Choose photography using these three considerations:
- Use photos of YOU and your direct client personnel. Just using photos of “the beautiful people” (meaning – stock photography of good-looking people) can erode trust if a potential client finds out later that it wasn’t really a photo of you.
- Watch the mixed messages some photography can send. Keeping in mind that advocates do not do medical work, don’t showcase medical photography. If you are a doctor or a nurse, but your business is all about advocacy, appearing in a white coat or scrubs dangerously sends the wrong message. (Learn more about this: Marketing, Ethics and the Law)
- If you use additional photos of people, make sure you reflect diversity: gender and race.

Important to Include:

Your phone number and other contact information should be prominently found on every page. You want to make it as simple as can be for someone to connect with you.
Your location, including city or town and state must be provided. (You would be amazed at how many advocates never bother to mention where they live and work!) Consider also adding towns, suburbs, or other areas near you; other places you can go to help clients. When people search, they often search for the word “patient advocate” then their location. The more locations you list (but only places you really are willing to go) the more opportunities for being found in a search.
Include at least one Call to Action. People will do what you tell them to do, so be sure to include phrases like “Contact Us Today!” or “Send us an email!”
Use logos / badges of your professional memberships because they quietly speak to your professionalism. Find APHA and Umbra Health Advocacy logos here.
If you are a subscriber to the Health Advocate’s Code of Conduct and Professional Standards, be sure to include that badge, too. (The link to that badge is found as soon as you complete the subscriber form.)
At least two lists: a list of the benefits of working with you, and a list of the services you provide. (See above.)
An About Us page that gives more personal information about who your client-contact staff members are, photos of them, and your interest in (passion for) advocacy. Clients hire people they trust, and being forthright on your website will help them trust you.
Keywords and keyphrases, those you use for SEO (see above) must be found throughout your site in your text. Keywords and keyphrases for your meta-content must be naturally occurring in your site, too. If you use words or phrases in your meta-content, but not in the text of your webpages, then Google will ignore them, or worse, may penalize you for (what it considers) trying to claim something that isn’t true.
If you participate on a regular basis in social media (Facebook, Twitter, others) then include links to those pages. Don’t join social media sites just to put those logos on your site. Unless you are an active member, then your link will look old, stale, and unattended. If that’s your status, better to leave them off.
If you collect any personal information on your site (email addresses, or any form someone is expected to fill out) then be sure to include a privacy statement and disclaimer. (See also the note below in Important Tech that talks about “https://”)
All sites should have a disclaimer about the work you do, featured on every page (it’s OK to include it at the bottom of the page) to be sure people don’t expect you to perform medical, financial, or legal work. See the disclaimer provided by APHA’s legal advisor, or the more extensive disclaimer found here.

Also Nice to Have:

A way to collect email addresses so you can capture interest for your newsletter. (Be sure to include a privacy statement if you do – see above.)
Testimonials about your work. Make sure they are HIPAA compliant.
Success stories. Provide a very brief and concise overview of a problem a client contacted you about, and then a few sentences on the resolution. This will be picked up by search engines. Don’t tell HOW you solved the problem (that’s your secret sauce.) Just tell what the outcome was, perhaps followed by a statement / call to action: “If your problem is similar, I may be able to help you, too. Call me!” Be sure you do not include any identifying information about the client.

Important Tech

Your site must be HTTPS (and not just plain ol’ HTTP). The “S” stands for “secure” and it represents an extra layer of security for all your visitors. So: https:// and not just http:// You’ll see this in a browser bar with a small padlock – if the padlock is closed, it means the site is secure. Previous to 2020, it was required only for any website that collected personal information (like collecting email addresses). Now any site that does not have that extra security layer is penalized by search engines. Ask your webmaster if you don’t see that closed padlock and insist the extra security be added. For most websites, it can be added at no cost.
Make your site mobile-friendly – called “responsive.” About half of the searches performed by people looking for an advocate will take place on a cell phone, tablet or other mobile device. If your site isn’t ‘responsive’, they will miss a lot of your information, and may not be able to figure out how to contact you. Further, if your site isn’t responsive, then search engines will penalize you; it will choose other sites to go higher on the list of results than yours. Learn more about what responsive means in web design.
Be sure your site is optimized for search engines. That means you will have used keywords and phrases that potential clients will use to search for you so that your site will turn up in their searches, plus you have a responsive site making it easy to use no matter what device the visitor uses. Learn more from Optimizing for Search Engines (SEO).

Additional Resources:

In addition to the links found in the checklist above, you can more extensive “how to” information in:

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Updated July 2019

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An Advocate’s Website Checklist