Medical expenses are often scary, expensive and unplanned. While hospitals have exclusive websites built for marketing initiatives, ranking and competing with fellow players - it is quite important to build a website keeping your customers in mind since the industry is becoming consumer-driven.

Now that online reviews, ratings and recommendations are considered before visiting even a hospital, the content you put out there on your site is important. Your website needs to be helpful in terms of services, pricing, discounts, facilities, locations, specialties, doctors - if patients cannot find what they are looking for on your website, they simply will not give you any business.

So other than original content, clear sharp images, crisp information and engaging factors that are must-haves for your site, the below are extra add-ons that everybody looks for:

Prospective patients and their families are always looking for reviews online either on the hospital website or other third party platforms like Yelp, Practo etc. Be it a patient's medical or dining or even simple hospitality experience at your hospital, everything needs to be recorded and (the good ones) can be showcased on the website.

There is a big push for transparency in the healthcare industry – and that includes being upfront with patients about quality rankings, whether they are impressive or not. The best thing about 

If you have returning patients - good news! What you can do in order to make their lives easier is to have a patient portal on your website that can allow them to login and check results, fix appointments, save records, scans and tests. Your patients will really appreciate this since you're saving them a lot of time, energy and paper!

While jewelry stores and electronic stores have brought about this excellent feature of online live digital purchasing from home, it is time this is introduced in the healthcare industry. A live video consultation is helpful for 

Most patients and their families treat hospital visits and admissions like any other major expense. They would like to know what they are looking at to either arrange for the cash or even make other plans around it. It is only fair to be transparent about the costing and an overall day/night stay expense along with ICU, beds, room charges to save the trouble for both parties.

For extremely price-conscious healthcare consumers, your hospital's marketing team may want to try out “limited time specials” for certain services, exclusive to users of their websites. Many other businesses, from car repair shops to restaurants, make similar offers available to customers - and they work.

While some of these features are used by most of your competitors already, you too might want to join the club. A hospital ERP, staff attendance, vendor management and many other exclusive health-care solutions are part of an increasingly competitive healthcare landscape - so common that they may become standard in the not-too-distant future.