Insights From Our Editors

Market Opportunity: Sell Contact Lenses on Your Web Site

Feb. 10, 2016

It’s worth making it easy for patients to purchase contact lenses on your practice web site, findings from The Vision Council VisionWatch 2015 Internet Influence Report suggests. When it comes to vision needs, Americans were most likely to use the internet when buying contact lenses, where 30.7 percent of recent buyers used the internet to any extent during their last contact lens purchase. Even fewer Rx eyeglass buyers (22.5 percent), plano sunglass buyers (20.9 percent) and OTC readers buyers (8.0 percent) used the internet for any assistance during their last purchase.

Make it easy for patients to do business with your practice. The more difficult it is to do business with the practice, the more likely patients will leave us for more convenient choices such as the internet.

It’s important to separate out using the internet when researching a purchase from the actual purchase. More people look than buy. But they still look. And looking is the first step toward purchasing.

Actual contact lens purchases over the internet are about 18 percent of all contact lens purchases made from any source. That’s significant dollars lost from a practice. From the MBA data presented in the chart below, the average practice takes in 16 percent of its revenue from the sale of contact lenses.

If a practice generated $1 million of total revenue collected from all sources, then 16 percent of its total revenue would represent $160,000. How much is actually being lost to the internet? Eighteen percent of the contact lens revenue would be almost $29,000. Can you think of something to do with $29,000?

If we are following the concept of working smarter and not harder, then if we can save $29,000 for the $1 million practice (or $14,500 for the $500,000 practice), that seems like a good move. We should know the answer to the question: When are we most susceptible to losing our contact lens patients to the internet? The answer is between 7 pm and 8 pm.

Here’s a simple question: Can I buy contact lenses from your practice between 7 pm and 8 pm? If you answer “Yes,” then you’ve made it easy for me as a patient to do business with you. If you answer “No,” then you’ve made it more difficult for me to do business with you, and the odds are that, while I’m thinking of it, I’m going to go online and see what I can do to solve my contact lens purchasing problem.

There are many solutions in today’s market to permit patients to purchase contact lenses from your web site. Take this week and find the one that fits your prescribing philosophy and get it implemented. Don’t lose patients unnecessarily to the internet. Make it easy for patients to do business with you.

To Top
Subscribe Today for Free...
And join more than 35,000 optometric colleagues who have made Review of Optometric Business their daily business advisor.