Five Reasons Why Your Eyecare Practice Needs E-commerce
According to Imperial Optical research, fewer than one in five private eyecare practices offer their patients the ability to reorder their contact lenses from their practice website. Of those that do, many require office personnel to process the order in a similar manner to a phoned-in order. If you are one of those practices that have not yet added e-commerce to your practice portfolio, I encourage you to read the following five reasons why your eyecare practice needs e-commerce:
Reason #1 Why Your Eyecare Practice Needs E-commerce: One Third of Your Patients Already Buy Online
According to Pew Internet & American Life Project, approximately one in three of your adult patients have already made an online purchase. As broadband technology continues to become more affordable, the number of households with high-speed Internet access will increase and so will the percentage of your patient population that become regular Internet buyers.
Whether you like it or not, the Internet is changing the way your patients/customers live. Offering your patients the option to order online from your practice website lets them know you care about meeting their needs. While your online contact lens e-commerce platform won't likely generate sufficient profits to cause your early retirement, it will provide goodwill to your patients and help you improve patient satisfaction and loyalty.
Reason #2 Why Your Eyecare Practice Needs E-commerce: Online Contact Lens Reorder Capabilities = Value-Added Service
From the perspective of a sales and marketing guru, anything you can do to make the sales/transaction process easier and more convenient increases the likelihood of completing the transaction. If you are not currently selling full 1-year supplies to all your contact lens patients, the easier you can make that follow-on purchase, the less likely you are to lose that sale to somebody else.
Contact lenses have become a commodity, and as such, price is a primary factor influencing purchase decisions. As a distributor of these commodity products, I know all too well how price influences purchase decisions. However, I also know that perceived value and service levels frequently carry as much, if not more, influence in the purchase decision-making process. Making the process for your patients / customers easier and more convenient is one way to distinguish your practice from the competition.
Reason #3 Why Your Eyecare Practice Needs E-commerce: E-commerce Will Help Capture Lost Revenue
If you are like most private practitioners, you get requests for contact lens prescription verification from third party retailers. If these requests come from your patients, you are losing revenue. Chances are, you're losing more revenue than you realize. By maintaining a platform where those patients who are so inclined to want to order their contact lenses online (and for most, this decision is in no way a negative reflection on your practice) have the ability to do so from your practice website, you will capture a fair portion of that lost revenue.
Preliminary results from an in-process survey of consumers who purchased their contact lenses online from Internet retailers (this research is sponsored by Imperial Optical) indicate that if their doctor's prices were in-line with the major online retailers' prices, they would have purchased from their ECP's website – if given that option. This finding should not come as a surprise, and serve to support the decision to set up an online contact lens reorder platform.
Reason #4 Why Your Eyecare Practice Needs E-commerce: E-commerce Platforms Can Improve Staff Efficiency and Productivity
This usually translates into improved practice profitability. When I refer to an e-commerce platform here, I am not referring to an online form that simply alerts your practice of an order request. I am referring to a platform that processes the order, charges your patient's credit card, and seamlessly submits the order for fulfillment. There are a number of providers of this type of e-commerce platform. One of the highest functioning platforms is PatientWire, which is used to power www.PatientWire.com, www.ECPWebsolutions.com and www.ByteEmDoc.com.
How much time does your staff currently spend processing emailed or phoned in orders? Worse yet, how much time goes into the prescription verification process? Imagine how much time and effort could be saved by automating that entire process (the PatientWire and ECP WebSolutions platforms also tie in an automated telephonic contact lens reorder platform for those patients who are not quite ready to reorder online). You can reduce the number of patient reorder calls, the time pulling patient records, placing orders, checking shipments in, calling patients to schedule pick-up, collecting the patients' money and finally paying those invoices. If you are a staff member responsible for any of this process, make sure your practice owner/manager reads this article and considers adding e-commerce.
Reason #5 Why Your Eyecare Practice Needs E-commerce: Early Adapters Will Have a Competitive Advantage
By 2010, e-commerce will become a standard expectation (from the patients' perspective) for eyecare practices – and those practices that have still not entered the world of e-commerce will be at a competitive disadvantage. However, if you look at my opening statement – "fewer than one in five private eyecare practices offer their patients the ability to reorder their contact lenses from the practice website" – it is clear there is significant opportunity for forward thinking practitioners to act now and gain a market advantage over their local competitors.
If you are one of the firsts practices in your local community to offer online contact lens re-ordering, be sure to send your local media a press release (feel free to contact me for a no-cost review of your press announcement) announcing your entrance into the high-tech world of e-commerce. With little effort, this can result in a feature story on your practice. Even if you are not the first to offer this service, if it hasn't hit the papers in your town, give it a try. This sends a statement that your practice is in touch with the changing times and is sensitive to the needs of contact lens wearers (both yours and your competitor's).
The Internet and e-commerce are here to stay. Being innovative, taking "risks" and not waiting for the herd to nudge you along are traits that most successful businesses aspire to. If you are satisfied that your practice has no room for improvement, do nothing – I apologize for wasting your time. If you do see an opportunity here, take action.
Article Reprinted in OptiCourier's December 2006 issue.
