Build it and They Will Come… Really?
Written April 10th, 2008 by Katrina GriffinLuckily we have search engines for people to find our site, but if they do not know what it has to offer, why would they come? No one is directing them there and telling them what they can find. How do you portray the value of your site and the services it offers patients when no one has heard of it before or knows that it is actually more than marketing fluff being pushed at them?
As I look back on the past year, there have been many changes to all of the web sites I’m responsible for at my organization. They’ve gone from static boring marketing fluff brochure sites to always changing functional sites that are useful for the health care consumer. Almost all of them have received a much needed face lift and are redesigned and moved to a new CMS. Flash and video is now playing on the site along with new functionality and interactivity. Content and information has been updated and is still being updated to make it more useful to the patient.
Although the site has been constantly changing for over a year now, people are just beginning to talk about it. They like the flashy stuff on the homepage, but miss the important functionality we’ve added to the site such as online bill pay, the ability to send a patient a free e-card in the hospital, CaringBridge, the online flower shop, online donations, online registration for health screenings and other events, online pre-registration, RelayHealth where you can set appointments with your physician office, take part in an e-visit and order re-fills on prescriptions. These areas are getting some traffic, but not the kind of traffic they should be getting. How do you get traffic to useful features of your web site? Is a generic commercial about your web site on tv and billboards enough?
While the marketing department is doing campaigns on our major service lines and physicians, why can’t they include a feature from the web site that coincides? Do you think it would be worth it to do a campaign on features of the web site? What about promotional items in the physician offices and waiting rooms?
What sparked my thought on this is the intranet project I’m currently working on. My organization has never had an intranet and I’ve been handed the responsibility of doing so, but as I’m spending hours and hours working on this and in meetings with people who have all kinds of feedback, I’m wondering how I’m going to get people motivated to use the intranet. This is going to include a change in culture for the organization, which I’m learning in my MBA classes is a risky and big task for any organization. The IT department here has developed an intranet before and the project failed because people are so reluctant to change and always see it as adding more work. This fact is definitely concerning, but I think with enough planning I’m on track to overcome that resistance this time. However, I’m concerned that if the marketing department won’t even support my online initiatives with our external web site, how will they support my internal initiatives? Thankfully, I have a bit of support from the HR department, which is a big help. So far I’ve been attempting to speak with each department individually to get them involved (snag some content managers) and get their buy in and in some cases I’ve been met with resistance.
What steps have you taken to gain acceptance of your intranet? How do you drive traffic to your intranet?
April 10th, 2008 at 9:55 am
> What about promotional items in the physician offices and waiting rooms?
Yes - you need the practitioners pushing their patients to these services to get the traffic there. Advertising out to the world brings attention to your system, but it’s the patients that need targeting for the interactive services (usually). Inserts in billing statements could help, as well, but selling practitioners on the value of these tools will go a long way.
As for Intranet buy-in, I don’t know. A tough-love approach might work - make the Intranet the sole source of info in certain cases, and push people there via e-mail? A communications strategy would be helpful - what does your head of internal comm think about the Intranet?
Whew - good luck with all that. I feel your pain.
April 10th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
You have a big task ahead of you with the intranet. We have a fairly robust intranet and I think that is the key to its success. Make it useful. The most used part of our intranet is our online employee directory. We have over 8,000 employees so having an online directory is a must. We also have a department directory so people can find department mailstops and phone numbers online. Our intranet homepage has news stories that are updated daily and also correspond with a system-wide email that goes out once a day that drives people there. The key is to show people that the intranet is there to help make their jobs easier.
As far as the external site and marketing support, do your homework and show them that the internet is how people are getting their health information these days and that it should be a focus for marketing.
Good Luck!
April 29th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
I agree with make your intranet useful. We also have our employee directory available, our daily communication piece to the corporation, our benefits site where employees can log in and view/edit their benefit options, and so much more. There are some links to 3rd party applications and vendor sites that different clinical departments must use for their jobs and our intranet is the only way for them to access them. This greatly enhances the use of the intranet and the education of the staff on what they can find there.
Another trick we use is having a web access page that links our staff to all our internal sites, external sites, upcoming events, and more. This web access page is set as the start page on all organization-wide PCs. Our staff are now very comfortable using this page as their launch page to access anything. Even if they hit this launch page to link somewhere else, they will see the intranet link and eventually venture in to check it out.
Another thought is to make sure at any/all new employee orientations or existing employee refresher meetings (we have quarterly employee forums to update all staff on the happenings around the hospital) that written information is provided to the staff about the intranet, what can be found there, and the url to access it.
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:22 pm
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