A healthcare website redesign improves how patients find, access, and engage with your services. As more healthcare interactions move online, your website plays an important role in patient trust, accessibility, and compliance.
Patients expect fast load times, clear information, mobile access, and secure data handling. While regulations like HIPAA and ADA accessibility add further complexity.
This guide outlines how to approach a healthcare website redesign in 2025, including when to consider it, what to prioritize, and how to build a site that supports both patient needs and compliance requirements.
5 Signs Your Healthcare Website Needs a Redesign
Not every website requires a complete overhaul, but there are clear signs that indicate when a redesign is necessary for healthcare organizations.
From our experience working with medtech companies, these are the top signs:
- Outdated design or poor mobile experience. If your site feels dated or is difficult to use on mobile devices, visitors will leave before engaging.
- Slow load times or low Core Web Vitals scores. A slow website affects search engine rankings and discourages patients from accessing care or resources.
- Compliance issues with HIPAA or ADA. Failing to meet healthcare compliance standards for data privacy or accessibility can lead to legal risks and loss of patient trust.
- Limited content flexibility: If your marketing or content team struggles to update the site, add new services, or integrate tools like patient portals or telehealth, your CMS is holding you back.
- Low patient engagement or conversion rates: Metrics like appointment bookings, form submissions, or resource downloads offer clear signals. If these are underperforming, the site isn’t supporting your goals and you need to redesign it for inbound marketing.
5 Key Goals for a Healthcare Website Redesign
Before you hire an agency or get more in-house design help, you should have a rough idea of your redesign goals. Here are a few to keep in mind:
1. Improve Patient Engagement and Trust
Your homepage and service pages should make it easy for visitors to understand what care you provide, how to access it, and why they should choose your organization.
Include service line overviews, provider bios, and clear calls to action like appointment scheduling or patient portal access.
Adding trust signals such as accreditations, patient reviews, or outcome data is a great idea.
2. Support HIPAA Compliance and Data Security
Any part of your website that collects or processes protected health information (PHI), such as appointment forms or patient portals, needs to meet HIPAA compliance standards.
This includes using encrypted data transmission (TLS/SSL), access controls for sensitive areas, audit logs, and HIPAA-compliant hosting.
Compliance should be baked into both the technical architecture and third-party integrations to avoid legal and reputational risks.
3. Optimize Performance and SEO For Discoverability
Healthcare websites often serve multiple regions or service lines, which makes SEO a key part of discoverability.
Your redesign should include a structured content hierarchy with clear service pages, local SEO optimization for each location, and schema markup for medical services.
Performance impacts both user engagement and search rankings—optimize load times by using modern frameworks, image compression, and fast hosting environments.
Discover how Presbyterian Healthcare Services improved their organic search presence with the help of Webstacks.
4. Enable Content Flexibility for Healthcare Teams
Healthcare websites need to scale with new services, locations, and patient needs. A rigid CMS makes updates slow and complex.
Redesign your site with a CMS that allows non-technical teams to manage content like provider profiles, service line updates, or blog posts without developer involvement.
We recommend adopting a headless CMS, which is a more flexible and scalable option compared to traditional platforms.
Modular content structures also make it easier to maintain consistency across the site.
5. Integrate Patient Portals, Telehealth, and Scheduling
Rather than simply linking out to external tools, integrate patient portals and telehealth services directly into your site’s navigation and workflows.
This allows patients to complete tasks such as booking appointments or accessing telehealth sessions without disruption.
CMS, Hosting, and Security
When redesigning your healthcare website, this is a great opportunity to evaluate your CMS platform, hosting provider, and security measures to see if they are holding you back.
Choose a CMS That Supports Compliance And Scalability
Not all CMS platforms are equipped to handle the specific needs of healthcare organizations.
Traditional platforms like WordPress may offer familiarity, but lack built-in support for HIPAA compliance and scalable content structures.
Consider headless CMS options like Contentful or Sanity, which allow for greater control over data security, content modeling, and integration flexibility.
These systems can separate your frontend experience from backend content, giving your team more freedom to evolve the site and maintain security.
Invest in HIPAA-Compliant Hosting
Hosting infrastructure needs to support encrypted data storage, secure access, and audit trails. Because your site likely processes or stores PHI through forms, patient portals, or scheduling tools.
Look for hosting providers that offer HIPAA-compliant hosting environments with Business Associate Agreements (BAAs), such as AWS HIPAA-eligible services or TrueVault.
Prioritize Performance and Uptime
Performance directly affects both SEO and patient engagement. Hosting should include a global content delivery network (CDN) to serve assets quickly across regions, automatic scaling to handle traffic spikes (especially during health crises or service promotions), and uptime guarantees.
Frameworks like Next.js combined with platforms like Vercel or Netlify help optimize load times and site reliability.
Secure Third-Party Integrations
If your healthcare site uses third-party tools for patient forms, telehealth, or CRM functions, verify that each integration meets your compliance and security requirements. Data passing between your CMS, integrations, and external systems should be encrypted, logged, and monitored for any vulnerabilities.
Design Best Practices for Healthcare Websites
When it comes to web design, keep these best practices in mind:
Accessibility and Readability
Design choices should make information easy to access for all users, including those with disabilities. Follow WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) to ensure compatibility with screen readers, proper color contrast, and keyboard navigation. Use clear typography with legible font sizes and avoid dense text blocks.
Simple Navigation
Healthcare websites often contain complex information across multiple service lines, locations, and departments. Simplify the navigation by grouping services logically (e.g., by specialty, condition, or location) and limiting the number of clicks required to reach key pages like appointment scheduling or contact information.
Add persistent calls to action like Schedule an Appointment or Access Patient Portal in the header or sticky menus.
Trust Signals
Patients need to trust your organization before engaging. Include provider profiles with credentials, patient testimonials, certifications, and security badges (like HIPAA-compliant or accredited by relevant bodies).
Display these on key pages, including homepages, service pages, and appointment booking flows.
Key Services and Pathways
Prioritize content that supports common user intents, such as finding a provider, scheduling an appointment, or accessing resources. Avoid burying critical actions behind multiple clicks or secondary menus. Use design elements like cards or icons to highlight key pathways, so it’s easier for visitors to navigate to what matters most.
What to Consider in Your Redesign for HIPAA Compliance
Healthcare websites that collect or transmit PHI must meet HIPAA compliance standards. Forms, patient portals, and telehealth tools all carry risks if they aren’t secured properly.
What parts of a healthcare website fall under HIPAA?
HIPAA applies to any part of your website that collects or transmits PHI. This includes appointment forms, patient portals, telehealth integrations, and any communication tools where patient data is shared.
Do all website forms need HIPAA compliance?
Only forms that collect PHI require HIPAA compliance. A newsletter signup may not qualify, but an appointment request form does. Treat every data collection point carefully, review what information is captured and where it’s stored.
What technical safeguards should be in place?
A compliant website should include TLS encryption (HTTPS) for all data in transit, access controls to limit who can view or edit PHI, and audit logs that track access and changes. Your hosting provider should also support HIPAA-compliant infrastructure and sign a BAA.
What about third-party tools and integrations?
Any third-party services that process PHI (such as telehealth platforms, form builders, or CRMs) must also comply with HIPAA and provide a BAA. Without this, using them could put your organization at risk.
How to Future-Proof Your Healthcare Website
A healthcare website redesign should support long-term growth, not just solve immediate problems.
As your organization adds new services, expands to new locations, or integrates new technologies like telehealth or AI tools, your website should adapt without requiring another overhaul.
We recommend building on a modular design system that allows new pages, components, or sections to be added without affecting the overall structure.
For example, if you launch a new service line, your team should be able to create service pages that follow the same design and content standards without developer input.
Use a flexible CMS that separates content from design, making it easier for non-technical teams to update messaging, add resources, or adjust navigation as your go-to-market strategy evolves. This reduces the time and cost of keeping your website aligned with patient needs.
Finally, stay current with regulatory changes. Compliance standards like HIPAA or ADA evolve, and your website should have the flexibility to integrate new security measures and consent management tools as needed.
Get Expert Help With Your Healthcare Website
A healthcare website redesign involves building a fast, compliant, and scalable platform that supports patient engagement and long-term growth.
At Webstacks, we help healthcare organizations redesign their websites with the right technology, design systems, and compliance standards in place from day one.
If you’re planning a redesign, our team can help you create a site that’s built to perform and evolve with your organization.
