Hospital website design in Japan – departments, recruiting and easy updates, in a free demo

Start hospital website design with who comes and what they need

Hospital website design begins with a list of visitors and their goals. A hospital has a wider audience than a small clinic, so the home page has to offer a clear entrance for each group.

• New outpatients: departments and doctors, reception hours, closed days, whether a referral letter is needed, directions
• Inpatients and families: what to bring, visiting rules, typical costs, a contact for consultations
• Referring clinics: the regional liaison office, referral steps, how to book scans or tests
• Job seekers: openings by role, training, how to book a workplace visit
• Local residents: health checkups, public lectures, news

Turn this list into clear entrances near the top of the home page – Outpatients, Admission and Visiting, For Medical Professionals, Careers. A practical first step: ask the front desk for the five questions patients phone in about most. Those are the first things your website should answer.

Navigation for a hospital with many departments

Department pages are where hospital sites usually get confusing. Patients often search by symptom or situation – "my knee hurts", "my checkup says I need a retest" – more than by department name.

• Offer a way to search by symptom or purpose next to the department list
• Build every department page from the same template: focus, main conditions treated, doctors, outpatient schedule, tests and equipment
• Show the outpatient schedule as a table that stays readable on a phone
• Use the same template for nursing, pharmacy, rehabilitation and other units
• Link to "How to visit" and "Access" from every page in one click

A shared template keeps the site consistent as departments are added and makes it easier for each department to write its own copy. For a single-specialty practice a much simpler setup is enough – see clinic website design.

Build recruiting and accessibility in from the start

Your website is also a key recruiting tool. Nurses, therapists and doctors who find you on a job board will check your official site before applying. Clear openings by role, typical pay and shifts, training, real workplace photos and an easy way to book a visit all shorten the path to an application. If recruiting deserves its own site, see recruiting website design.

Accessibility matters just as much. Hospital sites are used by older people, people with low vision and people who rarely use smartphones. In Japan, JIS X 8341-3 – aligned with the international WCAG guidelines – is the usual reference. Check these points at the design stage:

• Generous text size and strong contrast between text and background
• Phone numbers that dial with one tap on a smartphone
• Meaningful alt text on images, and no information shown by color alone
• Menus and forms that work with a keyboard and screen readers
• Key content from PDF documents also available as normal page text

A CMS your staff can update, and rules for running it

Hospitals update a lot: closure notices, outpatient schedule changes, visiting restrictions, job openings. If every change goes through an agency, updates lag and the phones ring more. A CMS such as WordPress, set up so staff can edit through the admin panel, is the practical answer.

• Assign owners: news to general affairs, schedules to the medical office, careers to HR
• Separate roles: one person drafts, another approves before publishing
• Use structured fields: schedules and doctor profiles that format themselves once filled in
• Keep it maintained: regular CMS and plugin updates, backups and SSL checks
• Write a short manual: so updates continue when staff change roles

Keep the domain, hosting and GA4 accounts in the medical corporation's name so nothing is lost when people or vendors change. If your current site has stopped being updated, the steps in clinic website renewal apply to hospitals too.

Medical advertising rules and choosing a web partner

Since the 2018 revision of the Medical Care Act, hospital and clinic websites fall under Japan's medical advertising rules. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's guidelines prohibit false or exaggerated claims, claims of superiority over other providers and patient testimonials, and set conditions for before-and-after photos and explanations of self-paid treatment, such as stating costs and risks. The guidelines and their Q&A are revised from time to time, so check the latest official materials before launch and set up an internal review of wording.

When comparing web partners, these questions help. Budgets vary widely with scale; for hospitals with many departments, several million yen is typically not unusual.

• Will they review copy and wording with the advertising guidelines in mind?
• Do they propose easy-to-update structures for department pages and schedules?
• Do they plan accessibility and mobile layout from the start?
• Do the domain and analytics accounts stay in your name?
• Is there a clear contact for updates and maintenance after launch?

How UNANOBO builds hospital websites: the structure in a free demo

Before you commit, UNANOBO builds a free demo based on your departments, units and brand. You see how the home page entrances, department template and outpatient schedule work as real screens on a computer and a phone, share it internally, gather comments and then decide whether to go ahead.

The process is free demo, feedback, launch, growth. The founder handles every project personally, so you keep one contact from the first demo to updates and improvements after launch. Everything runs by message, in Japanese or English. To start, just send your current site address and a list of your departments.