Designing Websites for Physiotherapists
This is the Griffen Mill design guide to designing websites for physiotherapists, part of our website design guide series. Over the years, the individual designers within Griffen Mill have created websites for a huge number of physiotherapists, via our key client WebHealer. Physiotherapy has many specialities including sports or rehabilitation, it is often used in conjunction with psychotherapy services. A physiotherapy website must, in our opinion, convey a professional and health oriented identity. The designer must also be mindful of the target audience, which can affect preferred colour choices. In general, for physiotherapy websites, warm colours tend to work better than cooler ones.
Guide Structure
This guide, like most in this series, has the following key sections.
- Typical design requirements for physiotherapy websites
- Choosing colour for physiotherapy websites
- Shape and related aesthetic decisions
- Images and photographs for physiotherapy websites
This guide continues with section one, and you may use the above links to read more about later sections, which will go into more detail. In each case, the approach used to communicate our ideas leans towards examples, such as examples of images useful for a physiotherapy website or palettes that often appeal to physiotherapists.
Typical design requirements for physiotherapy websites
Although each physiotherapist will have their individual preferences in terms of style, colour palette and imagery, certain common traits appear more often in physiotherapy website design. Very often, the client is aiming at a professional and clinical appeal, using a bold colour palette that may complement natural tones, such as blue or red. When done well this will help evoke a sense of security and comfort.
When choosing the colour palette, the designer should be mindful of the images used and the tones used within them, so often there will be natural tones to complement. To help with a harmonious colour scheme, the photographs used can involve a composition that includes the range of colours in the palette, or one that emphasises one natural colour that complements the overall scheme e.g. back pain.
Finally, shapewise a physiotherapy website will tend to be more geometric or solid than, say a reflexology website. The designer should be mindful though that a human, inviting and welcoming appeal is important as well as a professional image.