Imagine you’re a patient with symptoms, but no idea of your condition. You don’t even know what treatment you need. (For bonus realism, add in the fact that you don’t know what a pharmacy can do aside from dispensing prescriptions). You take to Google (or, if you are in the other 5 per cent of the population, Bing! or Yahoo search) and type in words that ask the question you need the answer to, such as ‘flaky skin how to get rid of’. 

Google will then produce its list of recommended sites to visit, based on the factors in its algorithms. But the important one for our purposes is this – that your website will give people a solution to their problem, or at least the question they have asked. It has to be easy to read, and that means the information should be presented in a way that makes it easy for people to read and which covers the subject they want to read about.

That information might be presented as a guide on how to get rid of flaky skin, with recommendations for treatments that will help. Even better, if your website includes links to book an appointment, or buy a recommended product, Google will love you even more. Why? Because you’re making your visitor’s journey easier.

Rinse and repeat

Now, repeat the patient/symptom journey as someone who has just booked travel abroad, but the airline has told them they will need a yellow fever vaccination. If you don’t know where to go, you might Google ‘yellow fever vaccine near me’. A travel clinic business can be built on turning up in these kind of searches on Google.

You can repeat this process for every single one of your services, and every single one of your products.

If your website doesn’t appear when people are seeking health advice or searching for the kind of products you sell, when is it appearing? Does it appear at all? If a pharmacy website never shows up on Google, is it really a website? Your objective as a pharmacy owner is to make sure your pharmacy appears as a solution to people’s problems every time they search for something related on Google.

The simple case study above highlights why the future of pharmacy should start online. 

Not only can a website advertise automated processes like prescription collection points and reordering apps, it can act as the sign-up centre too. If you want it to, it can be an online replica of your pharmacy, where people can go for prescription only medicines approved by you, order and pay for them, and receive them without ever setting foot in your pharmacy. But that isn’t why the future of pharmacy starts online. It’s not about you. 

The future of pharmacy is online because that’s increasingly how patients are looking for healthcare. It’s because the sheer volume of people needing your services cannot be seen in person or spoken to on the phone. It’s because that’s the only way to automate, house and publicise everything that makes your pharmacy the people-friendly business it is. So, the future of pharmacy starts online. Will your pharmacy be there?