Physical therapy website design: the body map

A first physical therapy visit usually starts with a question about where it hurts. Many clinics use an image of a body that the visitor taps, sometimes with a required choice of one region before the next button activates. On a phone the regions can be small, the image can scale oddly, and a tap can land between two areas. A visitor with knee pain taps near the knee, sees nothing change, taps again, and may end up with the hip highlighted because it was the closest area.

• Does the body map respond to a tap on a phone, and show which area is chosen?
• Is a plain list of body areas offered too, for anyone the map does not suit?
• Is the referral question explained, with a line saying the clinic will confirm it?
• Does the pain scale work with a thumb, and show the number as it moves?

A body map looks simple on a laptop, where the cursor is small and precise. On a phone the visitor taps with a thumb, which covers more area than the region they meant. Many maps were built with one hit area per part of the body, drawn for the image rather than the finger. The knee may be a narrow strip, with the thigh and the shin around it. A tap in the gap does nothing, and a tap on the thigh selects the thigh, so the visitor learns the form is broken instead of learning the body is hard to hit.

Test the map on a phone, using your own thumb on the knee, the lower back and the shoulder. If a tap changes nothing, the hit area is too small or the image is covered by another element. If the wrong area lights up, the regions overlap. Either way the fix is a plain list of body areas beside the map, so a visitor who cannot make the image work can still continue.

Onboarding flow testing

Many visitors do not know whether they need a referral before a first visit. The answer depends on the clinic's location, the visitor's plan and sometimes the condition, and a visitor has no way to check any of those while they are filling in a booking. A yes or no question that must be answered, with nothing explaining the difference, pushes the visitor to guess. A wrong guess can route the booking to a different step or a different form, and the visitor may not notice until the day of the visit.

Pick each answer in turn in a test and write down what the next screen says. A yes to a referral question might send the visitor to a page about a doctor's note, and that page should say what to bring. The test can show whether the question is clear, whether an unknown answer is allowed, and whether the booking goes on afterwards. It cannot tell you the rule for your area.

The pain scale is usually a slider from zero to ten. On a phone a slider is easy to move past the wrong number, and some sliders show no value until the visitor lifts their thumb. The intake may also ask for a diagnosis code, a referring provider's name or a list of past surgeries. Most people with a sore knee do not know those words, and a box that must be filled with them stops the booking at its first unanswerable field.

Make the pain scale show its number as it moves, and make the diagnosis and surgery fields optional for a first visit. The clinician can ask those questions at the appointment, where the answers are better. Keep the visit booking on its own path, separate from the clinical intake, so a visitor who wants a time is not asked for everything at once.

New clinics, new therapists and new intake questions each add or move a field a visitor must complete. A body image swapped in a redesign can change the tap areas, and a form can gain a required question overnight. Run the first visit on a phone after each change to the intake or the layout, and again before a campaign for a specific injury starts.