A practice notices that reception gets the same questions every week, about repeat prescriptions, blood test times and weekend appointments. The answers exist somewhere on the website, but patients either cannot find them or do not trust them. The questions keep coming.
Patient questions are one of the best sources of information about what a practice website is missing.
Why questions are valuable
Each question shows something the website failed to explain, or explained somewhere patients did not look. Collected together, they show exactly which pages need work. Treatment pages are a common gap, as covered in treatment information pages patients actually read.
The checklist
1. Collect questions from every channel. Reception notes, emails, contact forms and website conversations. SpideyChat for healthcare practices keeps each conversation, so questions asked on the website are already recorded.
2. Group by topic. Common groups include appointments, prescriptions, registration, test results, referrals, opening hours, parking and costs. Referral questions are often a large group, as covered in referral questions from patients and other professionals.
3. Count them. Which topics come up most? These are the priorities.
4. Check the website against each topic. Is the answer there? Is it easy to find? Is it written clearly? Is it up to date?
5. Separate admin from clinical. Admin questions can be answered on the website. Clinical questions should be counted, since they show where patients need support, but individual answers must come from clinicians. General health information, if published, should be approved by clinicians.
6. Rewrite the weakest pages. Start with the topic that has the most questions and the weakest page.
7. Retrain the assistant. Once pages are updated, retrain the assistant so it answers from the new content.
8. Review again. After a month, check whether questions on that topic have dropped.
Turning questions into pages
The process of turning common questions into content is covered in unanswered questions into website pages. Online shops do the same with product pages, as in the product page questions that mean you are missing content.
The free AI FAQ generator can help draft admin FAQs from a list of questions. Any draft should be reviewed by the practice team before publishing.
An example review
Imagine a month's questions grouped like this: prescriptions come up most, followed by registration, then parking. The prescriptions page turns out to explain the process in one long paragraph, with the ordering link buried at the bottom. Rewriting it as three short steps with the link at the top takes an afternoon. Registration questions show that patients cannot tell whether they live in the catchment area, so a list of covered streets or postcodes goes on the registration page. Parking questions reveal that the car park entrance is on a different road from the main entrance, which nobody had thought to mention.
None of these changes is difficult. Each one removes a stream of repeat questions, for reception and for patients.
Involving the team
Reception staff know which questions come up most, often better than any report. Ask them for their top five each month and compare with what the website conversations show. Where the lists agree, you have your priorities.
What to expect
Practices that do this regularly often find the same few topics dominate. Fixing those pages reduces repeat questions at reception and online, and patients feel better informed.
Privacy
When reviewing questions, focus on the topic, not the patient. Do not copy personal details into content planning documents. The aim is to improve information for everyone, not to track individuals.
Setting it up
Install the assistant on your key pages and train it on your site. The guides to installing the widget and training your bot explain how.
A monthly review of patient questions is one of the simplest ways to make a practice website more useful.