Most practice websites are written about the practice. The patient is a guest in somebody else's story.
You can measure this. I did, on eleven real practice websites, and seven of them talk about themselves more than they talk to the patient.
Here is the test, the result, and the framework that explains why it keeps happening.
The test
Pull the homepage. Strip the code. Count two things.
First person plural: we, our, us. Second person: you, your.
Divide the first by the second. Above 1.00 and the page talks about the practice more than it talks to the person reading it. Below 1.00 and the patient is the subject of their own visit.
That is the whole measurement. It takes ten minutes and it is not a matter of opinion.
What came back
Eleven homepages, measured on 23 September 2026. Veterinary, dental, chiropractic and optometry, between 900 and 5,900 words each.
Ratio above 2.00 ..... 1 site
Between 1.00 and 2.00 ..... 6 sites
Between 0.80 and 1.00 ..... 3 sites
Below 0.50 ..... 1 site
Seven of eleven above 1.00. The worst sat at 2.05, which is two sentences about the practice for every one about the patient. The best sat at 0.20.
I am naming the winner and not the rest. Several of these are sites I have shown on sales calls as examples of good work, and a pronoun count is a narrow measure of a website, not a verdict on the practice or the people who built it. One site could not be measured at all because its homepage renders through Javascript and returns seven words of actual text, which is its own problem for another post.
The one that won
100westdental.com came in at 0.20. Ten instances of we, our or us. Fifty instances of you or your. Five to one, in the patient's favour, on the homepage.
Here is the part I did not expect. I went looking at that site in the first place because somebody sent me an article on it about what Invisalign costs, and my honest first reaction was that it was a great piece of writing. I could not have told you why. Then I counted the pronouns and the answer was sitting right there. It reads well because it is about the reader.
That is the whole argument for patient-centric marketing in one accident. The site I instinctively admired scored lowest on talking about itself.
Why this keeps happening
Donald Miller named the mechanism in Building a StoryBrand in 2017, and it is the most useful marketing idea I have found for practices specifically.
His central claim is that the customer is the hero of the story and the brand is the guide. Not the other way round. When a business casts itself as the hero, the customer has no role to play, and a reader with no role in a story stops reading.
His seven part framework runs like this. A character wants something. They run into a problem. They meet a guide who understands the problem. The guide gives them a plan. The guide calls them to action. That action helps them avoid failure and ends in success.
Read that list and notice how few of the seven parts are about the guide. Two. Everything else belongs to the patient.
Now think about what is on most practice homepages. Years in business. Team credentials. Technology. Awards. Association logos. A group photo. Every one of those is the guide talking about the guide.
The seven parts, on a practice website
The character. A person who has been putting something off. Not "patients." A person.
The problem. Say it in their words, not clinical ones. They do not search for malocclusion. They search for crooked teeth. They do not search for periodontal disease. They search for bleeding gums. Whatever they type is the sentence that belongs on the page.
The guide. Two things only: that you understand what this is like, and that you are competent to fix it. Empathy first, authority second, and authority in one line rather than nine. This is where the credentials go, and it is the only place they go.
The plan. Three steps. Book a visit, we look and tell you what it costs, you decide. A patient who cannot picture the process will not start it, and a plan removes more friction than any adjective on your homepage.
The call to action. One primary action, repeated. Book. Not "learn more" alongside "contact us" alongside "request information" alongside a phone number in grey text. One.
Avoiding failure. What happens if they keep putting it off, said honestly and without scaring anyone. This is the section most practices skip entirely, and skipping it is why nobody feels any urgency.
Success. What life looks like after. Specific, ordinary and small. Chewing on that side again. Not wincing in photographs. Sleeping through the night.
Why practices default to we
Three reasons, and none of them are stupidity.
The first is that a practice owner is proud of what they built, and rightly. Twenty years and a good team is worth something. It is just not what the person on the homepage at nine at night is trying to solve.
The second is that credentials feel safer than claims about someone else's life. Saying "we have been here since 2004" is unarguable. Saying "you have probably been putting this off for two years" is a guess about a stranger, and being wrong about it feels worse.
The third is that most website copy is written by committee, and committees write about themselves. Every person in the room adds the thing they are proudest of. Nobody in the room is the patient.
What to actually change
Do not rewrite the site. Rewrite the first screen.
Take your homepage headline. If it names the practice, the town or a credential, it is a label rather than a headline. Replace it with the patient's problem or the outcome they want, in their words.
Then take the paragraph underneath and cut every sentence that starts with we. Not soften. Cut. Then rebuild the ones you actually needed, starting with you.
Then count again. If the ratio moved below 1.00 on the first screen alone, you have done the majority of the available work.
Everything else on the site can stay as it is. The about page is allowed to be about you. That is what it is for.
One honest caveat
A pronoun ratio is a proxy, not a proof. I have not shown you that a lower ratio produces more booked appointments, because I do not have that data and neither does anybody else selling you copywriting, myself included. What I can say is that the ratio measures exactly the thing StoryBrand says matters, it takes ten minutes, and it is the cheapest diagnostic I know.
Treat it the way you would treat a blood pressure reading. It is not the whole picture. It is one number, it is quick, and when it is high you do not ignore it.
If you are not dental
The framework does not change by category. Only the problem sentence does.
Veterinary: the character is someone who noticed their dog is slowing down. Chiropractic: someone who has stopped picking up their toddler. Optometry: someone who has started holding the menu at arm's length and is not ready to say so out loud.
Write that sentence first. The rest of the page arranges itself around it.
How to run this on your own site
Open your homepage. Select all the visible text and paste it into any document. Use find and replace to count we, our and us, then you and your. Divide.
That is it. No tool, no subscription, nothing to buy from anybody, including me.
The decision
Run the count on your own homepage before you read another marketing article.
If it comes back above 1.00, you do not have a traffic problem this month. You have a pronoun problem, and it is the cheapest one you will ever get to fix.
The views here are my own.