Med spa website design: what to build and check before launch

The pages a med spa site needs

Before you look at a single template, write the page list. A client choosing a med spa wants to know what you do, what it costs, who will do it and how to book. Each of those answers needs a home on the site.

• Home: your town, your main treatments, a book button and a short line on who you are.
• One page per treatment: injectables, filler, facials, peels, laser, and IV drips if you offer them. More on these below.
• Prices: a full menu or starting prices, on one page and again on each treatment page.
• Providers: everyone who treats clients, with a real photo, their name and the title your state allows them to use.
• Results: a before and after gallery sorted by treatment, if you have written permission for every photo.
• Book and contact: your booking link, address, parking notes, hours, phone and text number.
• FAQ: the questions your front desk answers every week, written out in full.

Hand this list to any designer you talk to. If a proposal has fewer pages, ask which ones they plan to leave out and why.

Design it for the phone first

Google builds its index from the phone version of your site. Its documentation says "Google uses the mobile version of a site's content" for indexing and ranking. Anything you want found in search, like treatment details and prices, has to be on the phone version too.

When you review a design:

• Ask to see the phone version first, on your own phone, before any desktop mockup.
• Keep the book button within thumb reach on every page, with text and call right beside it.
• Put prices and treatment details in real text. A price list saved as a picture cannot be read by Google or by a screen reader.
• Check speed on a phone. Google says it highly recommends good Core Web Vitals for success in Search, and you can test any page for free in PageSpeed Insights.
• Use your real space and your real staff in the photos. Stock photos of strangers do not show a visitor who will treat them.

One page for each treatment

A treatment page answers one search, like lip filler in your town. It also gives your ads a page that matches what the person typed, so they do not have to hunt through a homepage that lists everything. The landing page or homepage guide explains why that matters once you pay for clicks.

Each treatment page should cover, in this order:

1. What the treatment is, in plain words, and what area it treats.
2. The price or starting price, and what changes it.
3. Who performs it, with their name and the title your state allows.
4. How long the visit takes and what to plan for afterward, in wording your medical director has approved.
5. Who should book a consult first, and who should not book at all.
6. Photos of that treatment only, if you have them.
7. The questions people ask about it.
8. A book button near the top and another at the bottom.

Write each page in the words your clients use. If they say wrinkle relaxer and lip filler, put those words in the headings and mention the product names inside the text.

Before and after photos are claims

A results gallery helps a client picture what a treatment can do. It is also the part of a med spa site most likely to say something you cannot back up. The FTC judges a health ad by everything in it, "including the text, product name, and any charts, graphs, and other images." A photo makes a claim the same way a headline does.

When a photo or a client story shows a specific result, the FTC's endorsement guidance says people will read it as what they can expect too, and that statements like 'Results not typical' or 'Individual results may vary' won't change that interpretation. You need proof the result is typical, or a clear statement of what clients generally get.

For each gallery:

• Get written permission from the client for every photo, and keep it in their file.
• Shoot before and after in the same light, angle and distance, with no filters or retouching.
• Label each pair with the treatment, how many sessions it took and how long after the last one the photo was taken.
• Show results that are typical for that treatment at your spa, or say plainly what a typical result looks like.
• Give clients a simple way to ask for a photo to come down, and take it down when they ask.

Ask your medical director or a health care attorney about your state's rules on patient photos and consent before the gallery goes live.

Booking and forms

Every page should end in the same next step, so decide which one it is before design starts: book online, request a consult or send a text. You can use two: book now for facials and peels, and request a consult for treatments that need one first.

• Use the booking link from the software you already run, so the site and the front desk see the same calendar.
• Keep the contact form short: name, phone, the treatment they are asking about and a good time to reach them.
• Leave health history and medication questions to the intake inside your booking or charting system. A general website form is the wrong place for them.
• Send every form to a phone someone checks during business hours, and reply the same day.
• Set up each booking click, call tap and form as a conversion in your analytics, so you can see which pages bring in visits.

Accessibility checks to ask for

The Department of Justice has said "the ADA's requirements apply to all the goods, services, privileges, or activities offered by public accommodations, including those offered on the web." A med spa open to the public should build its site so people with disabilities can use it. The same guidance lists common barriers, and most of them are design choices:

• Contrast. The DOJ gives "light gray text on a light-colored background" as an example of text people cannot read. Thin script fonts on blush backgrounds cause the same problem.
• Alt text. Every photo gets a short description of what it shows. Google also uses alt text "along with computer vision algorithms and the contents of the page" to understand an image, so this helps search as well.
• Captions on every video, including the reel that plays on the homepage.
• Forms with labels, keyboard access and error messages that say what went wrong. Required fields should say required in words, with color as a second cue.

Ask your designer how they test for these, and run one test yourself: try to book an appointment using only the Tab and Enter keys.

Before launch and the week after

1. If you are replacing an old site, list every old page address and the new page it should send visitors to. Google's site move guide puts it this way: "we recommend that you use HTTP permanent redirects if possible, such as 301 and 308." The same guide advises pointing each old address straight to its final page.
2. Connect the site to Google Search Console and submit the sitemap.
3. Update the website link on your Google Business Profile and your other listings.
4. Book a test appointment on your own phone from the homepage, a treatment page and the prices page.
5. Open every treatment page on a phone and check that the price, the provider and the book button are all there.
6. Over the next few weeks, check Search Console for pages Google has not indexed yet, and fix what it reports.

Questions to ask a designer before you sign

• Who owns the domain, the words, the photos and the code once the site is paid for?
• When will I see a working preview, and how many rounds of changes are included?
• Will each treatment get its own page, and who writes the words on it?
• Who hosts the site, what does that cost each month and what happens to the site if I leave?
• Will you connect Search Console and my Business Profile before launch?
• How will I see the bookings, calls and forms the site brings in?

The guide to choosing a marketing agency has more questions to ask and the red flags to watch for. It was written for IV businesses, and the same questions work for a med spa.

Sources

• Google Search Central: Mobile site and mobile-first indexing best practices
• Google Search Central: Understanding Core Web Vitals and Google search results
• FTC: Health Products Compliance Guidance
• FTC: Endorsement Guides, what people are asking
• U.S. Department of Justice: Guidance on Web Accessibility and the ADA
• Google Search Central: Google image SEO best practices
• Google Search Central: Site moves with URL changes

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