Dental Website Design: Built Around Your Patients

Who this service is for

This service suits practices that need a website from the ground up. That includes new practices, practices that are rebranding, groups that have bought a clinic and want it under a new name, and practices whose current site is so far from what they need that a redesign would cost almost as much as starting fresh.

What a patient-first plan looks like

Before any design work, we map the questions a new patient tends to ask, in roughly the order they ask them. Am I in the right place? Does this practice treat what I need? Can I get there, and when are they open? Who will I see? What happens at the first visit? How do I book?

Each question becomes a page or a section. A family practice might need pages for children’s dentistry, check-ups and cleanings, fillings, emergencies and a new patient page. An orthodontic specialist practice needs pages that explain treatment options, consultation steps and how referrals work. The plan lists every page, its purpose and the content you will need to supply.

Design that feels calm and clinical, not cold

Some patients feel anxious about dental visits before they ever reach the front door, and design can help. We use generous white space, a restrained colour palette built from your brand, large readable type and real photography of your team and treatment rooms. Calls to action are clear but not pushy: one primary button for appointment requests, repeated where it makes sense, and a phone number that works with one tap on mobile.

Every design starts as a set of page layouts you can review on desktop and phone before we write code. You see the home page, a treatment page, the team page and the contact page. Changes at this stage are cheap. Changes after launch cost more.

Content that fits the rules

Dental advertising in Canada is regulated by provincial colleges, and a website counts as advertising. In Ontario, for example, the Royal College of Dental Surgeons of Ontario (RCDSO) prohibits testimonials and superlatives such as “state of the art” and “cutting edge”, and requires dentists to disclose whether they are registered as a general practitioner or a specialist when an advertisement refers to an area of practice.¹ The RCDSO also says descriptive terms such as “cosmetic dentist” and “implant specialist” are not permitted, because they suggest a specialty that is not recognized.²

We write with those rules in mind from the first draft. Treatment pages describe what a service involves, who provides it and what to expect, without promising outcomes. Team pages show registration categories accurately. If your practice is outside Ontario, we check your own regulator’s current standards, because the details differ by province.

Accessible and fast by default

Ontario requires businesses and non-profits with 50 or more employees to make public websites meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA, with exceptions for live captions and pre-recorded audio descriptions.³ Many dental practices are smaller than that, but accessible design helps every patient: people using screen readers, older patients with low vision and anyone holding a phone in bright sunlight. We build to that standard regardless of practice size.

Speed matters for the same reason. Google’s Core Web Vitals suggest a Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, an Interaction to Next Paint of 200 milliseconds or less and a Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less, measured at the 75th percentile of page loads.⁴ We test against those numbers before launch.

What you receive

• A written plan with the page map, content checklist and timeline.
• Desktop and mobile layouts for review before development.
• Written or edited content for every page, checked against your regulator’s rules.
• A built, tested website with an appointment request form designed to collect only what the front desk needs.
• Structured data, a sitemap and the SEO foundations described on that page.
• A handover session and short written guide for your team.

Timeline

A single-location site with ten to fifteen pages takes about six to ten weeks. The slowest step is usually collecting content and approvals, not design or development. The process page explains each stage and what we need from you.

Questions to ask any designer

Whoever you hire, a few questions reveal how they will handle a dental website.

• Will you check the content against my provincial regulator’s advertising rules, and who signs off?
• What accessibility standard do you build to, and how do you test it?
• What happens to patient information sent through the website?
• Who owns the domain, the design and the content when the project ends?
• How will I update hours, team members and notices after launch?

Clear, specific answers are a good sign. Vague answers about “best practices” are worth probing.

Frequently asked questions

Do you use templates?

No. Each site gets its own design system, built from your brand colours, type and photography. We reuse well-tested code patterns for things like menus and forms, because those should behave the same everywhere, but the design itself is made for your practice.

Which platform do you build on?

It depends on who will edit the site. Practices that want to change text themselves can have a content management system. Practices that prefer to send updates to us can have a fast static site with no plugins to maintain. We explain the trade-offs in the written plan.

Can you write the content?

Yes. We interview the dentist and team, draft each page and check the wording against your regulator’s advertising rules. The dentist responsible for advertising approves every page before launch.

Do you include photography?

We can plan and direct a photo session with a local photographer you hire, or use photos you already own. Real photos of your team and rooms build more trust than stock images.

Sources

1. RCDSO: Advertising Guidelines Regulator
2. RCDSO: Use of qualifications, titles, and designations (26 September 2023) Regulator
3. Government of Ontario: How to make websites accessible Government
4. web.dev: Web Vitals Google developer documentation

Checked on 29 October 2026. Rules change, so confirm the current version with the regulator before you publish.