Sharing Your Scheduling Links and Buttons

Once online scheduling is on, patients reach it through a link you publish. Embed Links and Buttons generates those for you - the point being that you can send a patient somewhere more specific than your front page.

Three kinds of link

• General Links - book anything you offer. This is the one for your website's main button.
• Provider Links - book with one practitioner. Put these on that practitioner's own page or in their email signature.
• Visit Type Links - book one kind of appointment. These are the useful ones: a link that books exactly the follow-up you just told the patient to book removes every chance of them choosing wrong.

All Visit Types offers everything you have switched on.

Getting the link out

Copy link gives you the address for an email, a text or a social post. Copy the button code gives you HTML for a proper Schedule an appointment button on your website - hand that to whoever maintains it.

Test the Button before you publish. It takes seconds and it is the difference between a link that works and one your patients quietly give up on.

Build your own link is there when you want a combination the standard ones do not cover.

Embedding the portal

Rather than sending patients away, Embed the Portal puts it inside a page on your own site using the Portal Include Code. It keeps patients on your domain, which is worth something. Check it on a phone as well as a desktop - an embed sized for a wide screen is where this usually goes wrong.

Where to put them

• A single obvious button in your site's header or navigation.
• A visit-type link in appointment reminder and follow-up emails.
• Provider links wherever you list your practitioners.
• A general link in your voicemail greeting's text follow-up, if you send one.

Keeping them working

Links point at visit types and providers. If you stop offering a type online, or a practitioner leaves, the links pointing at them stop being useful - and nothing tells you where you published them. Keep a short list of where each link went; it takes a minute now and saves an afternoon later.

Re-test your main link whenever your website is rebuilt.