Fisher-Titus serves 70,000-plus residents in the greater Huron County area with a 99-bed acute care medical center as well as skilled nursing, home health and outpatient services. The medical center has been a staple in Norwalk since 1917. Fisher-Titus has always had a deep commitment to local care.

With big competition a short drive away in Cleveland and Toledo, the organization needed to make it easy for residents to know what’s available without the need to travel. Fisher-Titus turned to digital agency Geonetric to create a new site that was easier to navigate, had a more modern design and was built on a content management system that housed all the needed modules in one platform.

Investing in healthcare-focused solutions and strategy

Having worked with non-healthcare-specific vendors in the past, Fisher-Titus was excited to partner with an agency that focused on supporting the patient journey through digital. The organization was also drawn to the VitalSite Essentials CMS as it came with all the needed features functionality in one, easy-to-use platform.

With a sleek, modern design, the new site better matches the patient-centered care delivered inside the medical center. It also offers an enhanced experience with responsive design.

New primary navigation is based on decades of best practices in how healthcare consumers search and find information, putting Find a Provider, Find a Location, Patients & Guests and Medical Services at the users’ fingertips. Secondary navigation places on the homepage features top tasks like Pay a Bill and View Classes and stand out with icons.

Fisher-Titus’ new site also offers sophisticated cross-promotion throughout the site. This feature, built into VitalSite Essentials, allows site visitors to see related providers, services, locations, events and news in one spot.

That cross-promotion feature comes in handy for sharing content from their blog. This allows Fisher-Titus to share helpful articles on related services pages, encouraging site visitors to stay on the site and learn more about topics they care about.

Enhancing site functionality

One of the benefits of VitalSite Essentials is that is offers the core functionality out-of-the-box. With the new platform, Fisher-Titus was able to upgrade provider, classes, services, and location functionality.

Find a Doctor

Fisher-Titus’ new Find a Doctor offers a robust search feature that allows users to search by their top criteria. With built-in Schema.org markup on all physicians, the directory also helps Fisher-Titus improve search rankings for providers.

Each provider has their own profile page, showcasing areas of interest and specialties, alongside integrated physician reviews. Profiles also show the locations the provider sees patients, with a map, and a call-to-action to make an appointment.

Classes & Events

The Classes & Events directory helps Fisher-Titus with event promotion. The organization can now upload and control their own classes and events calendar, as well as feature related events and dates – something they weren’t able to do on their old site.

Serving a rural community, events and classes are a big part of Fisher-Titus’ outreach. Offering more features to site visitors as well as to administrators has been a much-needed improvement. The Fisher-Titus team is currently working with Geonetric to add a payment module to the functionality.

Find a Location

In addition, the Find a Location directory is a new feature for Fisher-Titus, allowing each location to have a profile with contact information and a map.

Care & Treatment

The Care & Treatment page also offers a full A-Z listing and taxonomy on the backend connects services with alternative terms, making it much easier for site visitors to find the service they are looking for regardless of the label they use to search.

Improving the user experience

The new site launched in March 2021 and immediately started delivering results. There has been a:

• 44.2% improvement in bounce rate
• 21% improvement in pages per session
• 8.4% increase in average session duration

The site is also delivering more site visitors from major cities in the region, including a 29% increase in users from Sandusky and a 15% increase in users from Willard.

In addition, Fisher-Titus worked with Geonetric to set up goal tracking with Google Analytics and since launch they have seen a 5.7% increase in goal completions and a 65.2% increase in goal conversion rate for “Viewed Find a Physician” and “Viewed Physician Profile.”