Website · Plastic Surgery
The gallery is the website. Everything else supports it.
In most specialties a photo gallery is a feature. Here it is the primary evidence a patient uses to decide, and building it properly is most of the project.
Why this is different
Website for plastic surgery is not the same job.
Before-and-after is infrastructure, not a page
A serious gallery needs consistent capture conditions, structured tagging by procedure and patient attributes so a visitor can find cases resembling themselves, and a consent record attached to every image. Practices that treat it as an image upload end up with an unfilterable grid that a prospective patient cannot use.
Consent is an operational workflow with legal weight
Consent must be documented and name the specific channels the image will appear in. Website consent is not social consent. Consent is revocable, which means you need a way to pull an asset across every surface quickly. This is a system, not a checkbox.
Photography is a service line, not a stock purchase
Stock imagery is broadly tolerated in dental and general medical. In plastic surgery it actively undermines the page, because the patient is there to evaluate your results specifically. Custom photography of the surgeon, the facility and the outcomes is a real cost line that other specialties do not carry.
The site is judged as evidence of your standards
A patient who cannot assess surgical judgment assesses the things they can. In aesthetics the site is read as a proxy for taste and care, which is why a dated site costs more here than the same site would cost a podiatrist.
What usually breaks
Symptoms, and what actually causes them.
The gallery has hundreds of images and nobody can find a relevant case.
Usually because: No filtering by procedure, age range, or body type. Volume without structure serves the skimmer and fails the person actually deciding.
You are unsure which images you have consent to use where.
Usually because: Consent captured on paper, or verbally, without a record tying each image to the channels it was approved for. This is a liability sitting on your homepage.
The site never mentions cost, so consultations open with sticker shock.
Usually because: Cost treated as a conversation topic. The patient has the question first, gets a number elsewhere, and arrives either anchored wrongly or not at all.
It looks like several other practices in your market.
Usually because: A specialty template. Patients comparing three surgeons see the same layout three times, which flattens exactly the differentiation you are paying for.
What we do about it
The work that is specific to plastic surgery.
This sits on top of everything on the website page, which covers what is included, how engagements are scoped, and the constraints we work within.
- 01
Build the gallery as a filterable system first
Procedure taxonomy, attribute tagging, consistent presentation, and a consent record attached to each case. We design this before design, because it determines the information architecture.
- 02
Stand up a consent workflow your staff will actually run
Channel-specific, documented, revocable, and integrated into the post-op process rather than bolted on. Including a defined path for taking an asset down.
- 03
Answer cost, candidacy and recovery on the procedure page
Ranges rather than exact figures, plus who is and is not a candidate, and what recovery genuinely involves. This qualifies the consultation before your coordinator spends an hour on it.
- 04
Make the surgeon visible as a person with credentials
Board certification, training, society membership and philosophy, structured so both an anxious patient and a retrieval system can use them.
FAQ
Questions we get asked.
How many before-and-after cases do we need to launch?
Fewer than you think if they are well organized. Twenty properly tagged and filterable cases across your main procedures beats two hundred in an undifferentiated grid. What matters is that a visitor can find someone who resembles them.
Can we use images if the patient agreed verbally?
No, and we will not publish on that basis. Consent needs to be documented and to name the channels the image will appear in. We would rather delay a launch than carry that exposure, and we will help you paper the ones worth papering.
Do we really need custom photography?
In this specialty, yes, and it is the line item most practices try to cut. A patient evaluating your aesthetic judgment is looking at your images. Stock photography tells them you did not have your own, which is the opposite of the message.
See where website is costing you patients.
What your gallery, consent records and procedure pages currently do for a patient deciding between three surgeons.