What’s The Purpose of Your Website?
Written October 17th, 2007 by Aaron HolbrookI’m going to preface this by saying I’m still fairly green when it comes to healthcare (I graduated from college in May of ‘06). With that said, I’ve just recently realized how much of an impact I think I can make…
Centegra Health System is a two-hospital sytem about an hour north-west of Chicago. We’re more of a rural hospital, but are constantly growing as more and more people move out of the city and into the suburbs.
The main purpose of our website is to provide an overview of the hospital and individual service lines - pretty much just a basic brochure-ware site (with minimal interactive features). The basics are covered with a physician finder and dynamic syndicated content. I know that many people (internally) view the site as a great way to promote our brand - almost like a really big brochure. But I’d really like to see it being used as a tool to draw more people in, and to make it something people want to return to and use time and time again because we offer services they can’t find anywhere else (online or off). And to finish it off I’d need to be able to show my superiors how effective the website is, how much money we’re spending on it, and how those dollars spent have created even more dollars earned.
Maybe I’m dreaming of something that wouldn’t ever work - or maybe I’m just stuck with big dreams without the tools to make them become reality.
Has anyone run into this situation? What did you end up doing and was it as effective as you had hoped?
October 18th, 2007 at 10:20 am
I found one source to particularly helpful: eHealthExecutive best online practices for hospitals: http://www.ehealthexecutive.com
You can take a look around, but one bit that I found a while back was the model they created for perfecting a hospital’s online presence: 1. Information, 2. Interaction, 3. Integration, and 4. Personalization.
At each step you develop online content and tools for your customers. Your hope is that you meet and exceed their expectation and in turn, modify their health care purchasing behavior.
I don’t have all the ideas of what to do, but I have a pretty good idea of what’s not worth doing. I follow two simple rules: 1. For content, “it must tell them something useful they didn’t already know.” 2. For online tools, it must “let them do something useful they couldn’t already do.”
If it doesn’t meet that criteria, scrap it.
I don’t think “do it because everybody else does it” has ever been a good rule. But that seems how most hospital web sites operate and maybe it works just fine for them.
But recently, there’s been more emphasis to make the web site work as a business development resource. So, I’m in your same boat … I need to produce more than just an online brochure.
Personally, I can say our hospital is looking at creating some unique online content and tools that are targeted at the “undiagnosed” - people who don’t need to come to the hospital yet, but very likely will in the next year. The programs are measurable and I hope to be able to produce significant downstream revenue results. And these are programs that take a little thinking and effort - nothing I can buy off the shelf.
I’ll let you know how it goes in about six months.
October 18th, 2007 at 11:17 am
Defining the audience and purpose for your web site is critical. And you often have to be the one to offer some tough love and remind folks that the CEO and the board are NOT the audience.
October 18th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
For our consumer-facing site, the mantra I’ve been sprinkling around WebiScope is “create an online health and wellness-oriented relationship with site visitors.” Via carefully-chosen tools and content, encourage visitors to return to the site, and eventually seek the services when appropriate or necessary.
The additional imperative for current patients is to offer practical resources.
As Neal points out, there are many reasons visitors come to a health care site. The challenge is not to lose sight of the basics by trying to be all things to all people.
October 18th, 2007 at 3:02 pm
Thanks everyone for your insights. It’s great to know that I’m not the only one out there going through the same thing.
As Neal says, knowing your audience and purpose is critical. I think oftentimes people forget to take a step back and really ask what the purpose is.