eHealth Articles & White Papers
A Letter to Web Managers Everywhere
By Ben Dillon - Vice President & eHealth Evangelist
Dear Web Managers,
I'm one of those people who spend an admittedly unhealthy amount of time online. And like roughly half of all Web users, I'm search-inclined. That's to say that more often than not, if what I'm looking for on your site doesn't jump out at me, I go straight to the search.
And if your site is like most hospital Web sites, I know your little secret. Your site search was an afterthought. You spent lots of time designing navigation. You spent lots of time writing content.
But using search as a way to get to that content was an afterthought.
I was an afterthought.
I know this because it's obvious. I know you personally never use the site search to find content because it doesn't work. I know because you've written thousands of pages of content but you can't figure out what to display in the search results.
And I'll repeat again - HALF of all users are search-inclined. And you give us indigestion. So I have some thoughts for you to consider as you remedy this situation.
It's not my fault
When I search and do not find anything, you yell at me. Big, red, cryptic messages that tell me I've somehow failed in my inability to spell otolaryngology or my bungled attempts to correctly identify the zip code where Dr. Smith has his office. You believe it's my fault and it's not my fault!
Granted, I will not read your directions. I will not go to training. And I will not understand your vague visual indicators. You cannot change my behavior to make me do these things. Recognize it, accept it and take responsibility.
How? Make your error message more helpful. Or even better...
Keep me from making mistakes
Part of accepting that this is your problem - and not my problem - is recognizing that I made a mistake only because you allowed me to make a mistake. Why did you let me pick a category that had no results? Why did you allow me to pick a combination of factors that don't go together? Why did you let me misspell that term?
In other words...
Don't make me think.
Frankly, I don't have time. If I need to process dozens of options or a page worth of instructions, it will lead to nothing but frustration. Frustration and lots of mistakes!
In other words...
Simple is better
The former programmer in me balks at this. More options give me more power to slice and dice things the way I want.
But that only works when you know a lot about the data included and understand query development. It turns out that, in the real world, complexity just causes me to make mistakes.
And finally...
Give me worthwhile results
This seems obvious. That's the whole point of this exercise, right? You want to give me results so that I can intelligently choose my next step. That is the point, isn't it?
Give me the right results - sure. But I only know what is shown on the screen. I don't know what you meant to say and I don't get any insights based on the context of the URL. I only know what you show me. And if you show me a bunch of nonsense, that's all I know. Give me enough information on each result so that I can make a worthwhile assessment of which result I should pursue.
And can you organize those results a little better? Who thought that alphabetically was the best way to return results?
In other words, help me be your customer.
Sincerely, Ben Dillon
