Practice Growth · For clinicians
Women's Health Practice Website Must-Haves: A Checklist for 2026
A women's health practice website has one job before anything else: answer the questions patients ask before they book. Do you take my insurance? Where are you, and how do I get there? Where do you deliver? Who are the clinicians? How do I make an appointment? After that, it has to load fast on a phone, be accessible, protect privacy and stay current. Accurate, findable information matters more than design.
A useful test: hand your phone to someone who's never seen the site and ask them to find out, in under a minute, whether you take their plan and which hospital you deliver at. Most practice sites fail at least one of those. Here's the checklist, section by section.
Homepage
Patients decide in seconds whether they're in the right place. Above the fold:
- What you do and who you serve, in one sentence ("OB/GYN and midwifery care in Park Slope and Bay Ridge")
- A prominent Book an appointment button and a tap-to-call number
- Locations, with borough or town
- A short insurance note linking to the full list
- If you're accepting new patients, say so
Real photos of your office and clinicians build more trust than stock images of smiling models.
Location pages
Each office gets its own page:
- Full address, including suite or floor (NYC patients will absolutely end up at the wrong entrance of a hospital-adjacent building otherwise)
- Embedded map and directions
- Nearest subway lines, bus routes, LIRR or Metro-North stations, and parking, as applicable
- Hours, including phone hours
- Clinicians at that office and their days
- A location-specific phone number if you use one
- Accessibility details: elevator, step-free entrance. For a patient in the third trimester or using a stroller, this matters.
Location pages also drive local search. See local SEO for medical practices in NYC.
Insurance page
Insurance is one of the top reasons patients call. A clear page cuts calls and wasted visits.
- List carriers and plan types. "We accept Carrier X" is less useful than "Carrier X commercial PPO and EPO; not Carrier X Medicaid managed care."
- Say whether you accept NY Medicaid, the Essential Plan and Medicare, if applicable.
- Add a "last updated" date.
- Include self-pay information and the required notice about good faith estimates for uninsured or self-pay patients under the No Surprises Act.
Clinician bios
Patients want to know who they'll see. Each bio:
- Name, credentials and role (MD, DO, CNM, NP)
- Board certification and training, accurately described
- Languages spoken, which in New York is often the deciding factor
- Clinical interests (menopause care, adolescent gynecology, minimally invasive surgery)
- Locations and hospital affiliations
- A professional photo
- A short, human paragraph in the clinician's own voice
Avoid unverifiable claims like "best" or "top" unless they refer to a specific, named recognition.
Obstetric care
For OB patients, spell out:
- Delivering hospital(s)
- Care model: physician team, physician-and-midwife team, or midwife-led
- How on-call works (who might deliver your baby). This is one of the most common questions patients ask at the first visit; answering it on the site saves time.
- What the first prenatal visit involves and when to schedule it
- How high-risk pregnancies are handled, including maternal-fetal medicine referrals
- Childbirth classes, lactation support or postpartum resources you offer or recommend
Service pages
A page for each core service, in patient language: annual exams, contraception, prenatal care, menopause care, abnormal bleeding, fibroids, endometriosis, pelvic floor issues, minimally invasive surgery, fertility evaluation.
Each should explain what it is, who it's for, what to expect and how to book. Keep medical content accurate and consistent with ACOG and other professional guidance, and have a clinician review it before it goes live.
Scheduling and portal
- Link to online booking from every page. See online scheduling for OB/GYN practices.
- Link clearly to the portal login, with help for patients who can't sign in.
- Post new-patient forms or explain how they're sent.
More on portal workflow in patient portal and telehealth best practices.
Accessibility
Accessibility protects patients and reduces legal risk:
- Target WCAG 2.1 AA. HHS's 2024 Section 504 rule adopts this standard for recipients of federal financial assistance, with compliance dates that vary by organization size. Confirm the current dates that apply to you.
- Use descriptive alt text, enough color contrast, keyboard-navigable menus and properly labeled forms.
- Don't put key information only in images or PDFs.
- Post language assistance information, especially if you serve patients with limited English proficiency.
Privacy, security and HIPAA
- Tracking technologies. HHS's Office for Civil Rights has issued guidance on pixels and other trackers on healthcare websites. Courts have narrowed part of it, but trackers on pages that collect health information, such as appointment forms and portal logins, remain a significant risk. Review every third-party script with your compliance team. See HIPAA-compliant marketing basics.
- Contact forms. Don't invite patients to submit symptoms through a basic web form unless it's secured and covered by a BAA. Send clinical questions to the portal.
- Notice of Privacy Practices. Post it prominently.
- HTTPS everywhere.
Speed and mobile
Most patients will see your site on a phone, often on a train. Check that:
- Pages load quickly on mobile data
- Tap-to-call works
- Buttons are big enough for a thumb
- Forms are short
Free tools such as Google's PageSpeed Insights flag the obvious problems.
Trust signals
- Real reviews, displayed in a compliant way and linked to the source
- Hospital affiliations and professional memberships
- Clear contact information and after-hours instructions
- A "last updated" date on key pages
The checklist
- Homepage with clear service, locations and booking button
- Individual location pages with transit and accessibility details
- Insurance page with plan types and an update date
- Self-pay and good faith estimate notice
- Clinician bios with languages and affiliations
- OB care model and delivering hospitals
- Service pages reviewed by clinicians
- Online scheduling and portal links
- WCAG 2.1 AA review
- Tracking technology review
- Notice of Privacy Practices
- Mobile speed check
Work through it once a year, and any time you add a location, a clinician or a payer.
Claim your free listing
Your website and your directory profiles should tell the same story. Claim your free listing so patients searching our New York directory see current locations, insurance and clinicians. Featured placement for practices that want more visibility is available at /advertise/.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most important thing on an OB/GYN practice website?
Clear, current answers to the questions patients ask before booking: insurance accepted, locations, delivering hospitals, who the clinicians are, and how to make an appointment.
Do medical practice websites need to be ADA accessible?
Accessibility is both a legal risk area and a patient-care issue. Many practices use WCAG as the technical standard, and HHS has issued rules applying WCAG 2.1 AA to recipients of federal financial assistance.
Should we put prices on our website?
Many practices list self-pay prices for common services. Under the No Surprises Act, uninsured and self-pay patients are entitled to a good faith estimate, and providers must post notice of that right.
Sources
- W3C — Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1
- HHS — Section 504 final rule on web and mobile accessibility
- CMS — No Surprises Act: good faith estimate requirements
- HHS Office for Civil Rights — Guidance on HIPAA and online tracking technologies
This article is for general education and is not medical advice. It does not replace an evaluation by a licensed clinician who knows your history. If you think you have a medical emergency, call 911.