Many clinic marketing problems are not about budget or creativity. They are small leaks between a patient finding you and a patient booking. A button says the wrong thing, a profile lists the wrong hours, an ad lands on a page that doesn’t match it. Each one is easy to fix once you can see it.
In November 2026 we looked at thousands of clinic homepages, and the figures below come from those scans. They show how common a few of these gaps are. They don’t tell you what is happening on your own site, so use this list as a checklist and test each item yourself.
1. A “Contact us” button where “Book online” should be
A patient who is ready to book doesn’t want to start a conversation. They want a time. A “Contact us” button asks them to write an email or make a call, wait and negotiate.
In our scan of 10,253 physiotherapy clinics and 11,225 chiropractic clinics, 49% of physio and 45% of chiro homepages had no online booking link or booking software that we could find. Among 10,794 dental homepages, 39% had none. These are figures about what we could detect on the homepage. A clinic might take bookings in another way, but a patient can’t see that from the page. You can read the full tables in our physio and chiro website study and the dental website study.
The fix: put a clear “Book online” button at the top of every page and again after the key information. Keep a phone number beside it for people who prefer to call. If you use Jane or Cliniko, our guides to Jane online booking and Cliniko’s booking page show how to connect it. Our online booking service can do the connecting for you.
2. No reviews visible on the site
Patients check what others say before they book. In the same scan, 68% of physio and 57% of chiro homepages had no star rating or review count on the page. Your reviews might be excellent on Google, but a visitor on your site won’t see them unless you show them.
The fix: add a live review feed or a rating badge near the booking button. Our guide on showing Google reviews on your clinic website covers the options. Before you quote any review in your own material, check your regulator’s rules; see health advertising rules for clinics.
3. A site built on a do-it-yourself platform and left alone
In the scan, 24% of physio and 26% of chiro sites were on Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy or Weebly. There is nothing wrong with those platforms. The problem is the site that was built over a weekend, never updated and never tested on a phone. A site like that tends to carry old staff photos, a stale “new patients welcome” banner and a booking link that points to a retired page.
The fix: whatever platform you use, put a date in your calendar twice a year to check every page on a phone.
4. The wrong Google category
Google asks you to choose a primary category for your profile. If you pick something close but wrong, you can lose visibility for the searches that matter. A physiotherapy clinic listed under a generic category, or a chiropractor listed under something unrelated, makes the profile harder to match with the right searches.
The fix: open your profile and read the primary category as if you were a patient. Pick the one that best describes the main thing you do, then add secondary categories that are accurate. Our Google Business Profile checklist lists the other fields worth checking at the same time.
5. Hours that don’t match
Your hours appear in at least three places: the profile, the website and any directories. When they disagree, patients arrive at a locked door or give up and call the next clinic. Holiday hours are the usual culprit, followed by a practitioner’s changed day that nobody updated online.
The fix: choose one master list of hours. Update the profile first, then the website footer, then the directories and the booking software. Use Google’s special hours feature for holidays. When someone leaves or changes days, make “update hours” part of the checklist.
6. Sending ads to the homepage
A person who clicks an ad for a specific service wants that service, not a general welcome. A homepage makes them search for what they just asked for. Our guide to physio Google Ads covers the structure in more detail.
The fix: send each ad group to a page about that service, with the booking button visible without scrolling on a phone. If you don’t have a page for it, build the page before you spend on the ad. Our service pages SEO guide covers what each page needs, and our Google Ads service can manage the setup and the tracking.
7. A booking path that breaks on a phone
Many of your visitors will be on phones, and a booking flow that works fine on your desk can fail in someone’s hand: tiny buttons, a form that scrolls sideways or a confirmation that never arrives. We haven’t measured that share for your site, so check your own analytics.
The fix: book an appointment on your own site from a phone, on mobile data, and time it. Then check the confirmation and the reminder.
8. Never replying to reviews
An unanswered review, positive or negative, tells the reader that nobody is watching. Replies should be short, courteous and careful. Never include details about a patient’s care, even if they have shared them. See our guide on responding to negative reviews.
9. Inconsistent clinic name and details
“Northside Physio”, “Northside Physiotherapy Clinic” and “Northside Physio & Wellness” on three different listings confuse people and search engines. Choose one form and use it everywhere, including the phone number and the address format.
How to use this list
Pick the three mistakes you suspect are costing you patients and fix those first. Then re-check the others in a month. If you want us to look at your profile, your site and your booking path together, claim your marketing audit and we will tell you what a new patient sees.