A patient sees your ad at nine at night. She opens your website, looks for the price of a cleaning and taps the green button: "Hi, price for a cleaning?". Someone else, in Miami, fills in the form with their name, email, the treatment they're interested in and their travel dates. Both could become patients. Only one gave you what you need to answer well the first time.
That's why "WhatsApp or a contact form?" is the wrong question. In the Dominican Republic, WhatsApp wins on volume and the form wins on the quality of the contact. The mistake is keeping only one. Here's how to set up both so each one does its job. The example is a dental or medical practice, but it works the same for any service business.
Why WhatsApp brings more messages
Almost everyone here is already on WhatsApp. Sensor Tower estimated about 7.8 million weekly active users in the country in the second quarter of 2025 (Sensor Tower), and Kantar found that 82% of households that bought something through a digital channel in the first quarter of 2024 did it through WhatsApp (Kantar). Writing there costs the client nothing: no other app to open, no email to look up, no confirmation to wait for.
That same ease is its weak spot. The first message is almost always short: "price?", "any appointments?", "info". You have to ask for everything else, and in that back and forth a lot of people cool off.
Why the form brings better contacts
A form asks for a little more effort, and that filters. Whoever fills it in has usually read the page and gives you what you need in one go: which treatment, where they're coming from and when they can come. It also works for people who don't use WhatsApp for this kind of thing, like many patients from abroad, and for whoever writes in the middle of the night and would rather get an email back.
The condition is that it's short. A nine-field form doesn't filter, it scares people off. In from nine fields to three we explain how to trim it.
Both, each in its place
| What the person needs | Best channel |
|---|---|
| A quick question: starting price, opening hours, whether you're open on Saturday | |
| A detailed inquiry: treatment, dates, travel from abroad | Form |
| Writing after hours and getting an answer the next day | Form, or WhatsApp with an away message |
The floating button: where it goes and when it gets in the way
The green button in the bottom right corner works because it's always within reach, especially on a phone. But there are three cases where it gets in the way:
- It covers something important. If on a phone it hides the form's send button, the cookie notice or the last line of a price, move it up or remove it from that page.
- It competes with the form. On the contact page it distracts whoever was already filling in their details. There, a WhatsApp link inside the page, next to the form, is enough.
- It doesn't say what will happen. A button that just says "WhatsApp" works worse than one that says "Ask on WhatsApp" or "Message us on WhatsApp".
A prefilled message that says where they came from
A WhatsApp link can open the chat with a message already written. WhatsApp explains it in its help center: the link is wa.me/ followed by your number in international format, and the message goes in the text parameter (WhatsApp help on click to chat). That way each page can open the chat with its own message:
- From the implants page: "Hi, I saw the implants page and would like information."
- From the international patients page: "Hi, I'm writing from abroad and would like information about traveling for treatment."
It saves you the first question and tells you which page is bringing in patients. It's the same idea we explain in where your clients come from.
A WhatsApp contact isn't recorded anywhere
This gets forgotten a lot. When someone fills in the form, there's a record: an email, a date, a row in a list. When someone taps the WhatsApp button, your website knows at most that it was tapped. The conversation lives on the phone of whoever answers, and if nobody writes it down, at the end of the month you don't know how many patients came from the website, how many booked or which treatment they asked about.
Three simple fixes:
- The prefilled message, which identifies the page. With it, every chat arrives with its source.
- Labels in WhatsApp Business. Mark each chat as "new", "appointment booked" or "didn't follow up". In some versions of the app they show up as lists (WhatsApp help on labels).
- A simple spreadsheet, one row per inquiry: date, where it came from, what they asked and whether they booked. Five minutes at the end of the day is enough.
What you shouldn't ask for on either one
For a practice there's one more rule. The Dominican personal data law, Ley 172-13, treats health information as sensitive data (art. 6), says nobody can be required to provide it (art. 75) and says it can only be processed with the person's express written consent (art. 76).
In terms of your website: the form shouldn't have a field for the patient to describe symptoms, history or medications, and it shouldn't ask for photos. Ask for their name, how to reach them and which treatment they're interested in, and add a line that says "please don't include medical information". Clinical matters are discussed at the appointment.
WhatsApp Business: the minimum before you add the button
If you're going to receive patients on WhatsApp, use the WhatsApp Business app and set this up before you publish the button:
- Business hours in your business profile.
- An away message for outside those hours. The app can send it only outside business hours, as long as you've set them in your profile (WhatsApp help on away messages). Make it say when you'll reply.
- A catalog with your treatments and starting prices, so the answer to "price?" is a link and not a paragraph. We cover it in quoting by WhatsApp.
And the most important part isn't a setting: someone has to answer fast. Why the first minutes matter so much is in the five-minute window.
What you can do this week
- Open your website on your phone and tap the WhatsApp button. Check whether the chat opens with a message saying which page you came from.
- Review your form. If you don't have one, add a three-field form to the contact page. If you do, remove any field that asks for medical information.
- Set up business hours and an away message in WhatsApp Business.
- Start the inquiry spreadsheet today, even if it only has two rows.
If you want a practice website with both channels set up properly, see how we build websites for clinics. Message us on WhatsApp and we'll tell you what your business needs and what it costs.