Your 6-step website action plan

Pitching a case to your leadership team for a new website is easy when you prepare using this solid six-step plan.

This website action plan will help you:

• Benchmark your website against competitor websites
• Define and communicate your website goals
• Demonstrate the need for a new website based on redesign and re-platform cycles
• Learn other teams’ website goals and see if yours align
• Show your commitment to staying within budget
• Demonstrate the return of investment
• Launch a new website that meets your organizational goals and web users’ top tasks

Step one: Benchmark your website

Comparing your organization to an industry leader may not have the impact you need with internal stakeholders. Instead, focus on comparing your current site to direct competitors that impact your business. Consider competitors with similar business models, competitive landscape, size and resources. If a quick competitive review surfaces several areas for improvement, you might also find the budget you need.

Here are some things to consider when benchmarking your website:

• Compare with similar web pages
• Test your website from multiple locations and devices
• Analyze your website against competitors
• Find out why your load time is what it is per page
• Look for healthcare industry specific benchmarks for website engagement metrics such as pages per session, average session duration, bounce rates on various pages, % of traffic from different channels, % of mobile traffic, and % of traffic to various sections of the website

Step two: Define your goals

There are different reasons hospitals may need a new web design and CMS. When deciding to redesign, there are many things to take into consideration. For example, your digital experience needs to accurately reflect your brand, help you achieve your business goals, be better than your competitors, and meet consumer expectations. Your site should be performing well and not leave you wanting for something more. If any of these things aren’t happening for you, it may be time for a redesign. Regardless of your motive, start by defining the goals you expect to achieve.

When creating goals for a redesign:

• Create a list of potential goals
• Determine how to measure the success of each goal
• Look for potential barriers to achieving your goals
• Identify how the plan to overcome any potential obstacles
• Review and modify your list

Another tip is to take the time to shore up communication with every department in the hospital. It can be a big challenge finding the right people to talk to. By doing it early on, you’ll know who has the information you need and gain their support as you move forward with making your goals a reality.

Step three: Create a digital front door strategy

To craft your organization’s digital front door strategy, learn about consumer needs in the healthcare journey and how to meet them where they need you to be. Figure out where you need to invest in to be competitive. In today’s market, consumers expect healthcare websites to deliver personalized experiences.

Here are some tips when creating your digital front door:

• Use the power of data. Geonetric’s 2022 Consumer Health Survey Report helps healthcare marketers understand how and where consumers want to engage with healthcare organizations using digital technology.
• Reevaluate every digital touchpoint with user experience in mind. Create a UX audit.
• Use personalization to your advantage. Consumers expect healthcare websites to personalize their experience by understanding their preferences and needs as individuals to deliver more relevant information and services.

Step four: Prove the ROI

When you outline your digital strategy, demonstrate the value of increasing your reach online. Discuss how people are currently using your site and how they expect to navigate their healthcare journey online.

The effectiveness of your website impacts your organization’s bottom line. When you have a website that meets your users’ needs, you’ll see an increase in:

• Average session duration
• Conversions
• Number of sessions
• Organic search ranking
• Organic referrals
• Overall web traffic and traffic from a specific demographic
• Pageviews

The key to proving ROI is to go a step farther than the baseline metrics listed above and tie that traffic to value and conversions. Some examples:

• Tie appointment requests to downstream revenue for targeted service lines
• Tie site traffic to the cost of paying for that traffic through online advertising
• Tie online bill pay to faster payment collection

Step five: Explain the risks of not moving forward

Stay ahead of your competition. Be sure your team understands that having competitors outperform you puts you at risk of:

• Losing traffic if your priority audiences can’t find you online
• Creating a poor user experience
• Missing the mark of meeting your organizational goals
• Losing market share of your health services
• Having ineffective brand awareness efforts makes it difficult to acquire new patients
• Losing brand loyalty

Step six: Conduct a website analysis

Here are some tips for conducting a website analysis:

• Compare your website to your competitors and note the weaknesses
• Grab screenshots that highlight areas to improve
• Keep a running record of the negative comments people have about your website
• Survey different departments on their needs from the website and include in your findings
• Anticipate objections and questions and come prepared with answers that include facts and data

Once you’ve gone through these six steps and get your approval to move forward, you’ll be ready to start planning your new site.

Plan with Geonetric

Ready to start your redesign project? Or looking for more tips? Contact us – we can help every step of the way. And if you’d like to learn more about VitalSite®, our healthcare specific CMS, sign up for a demo.

When it comes to healthcare website design, it can be hard to stand out today. Design is important — you need to represent your brand. But it’s about more than design, and today’s marketers must consider everything from user experience to load times on mobile devices.

Check out these recent examples of hospital websites, content marketing hubs, landing pages, and blogs that received recognition for visual design, user experience, and technical development.

• 2022
• 2021
• 2020
• 2019
• 2018
• 2017

2022 Award-Winning Healthcare Websites

You name it, our clients won awards for it this year. Custom location landing pages, content marketing hubs, patient-focused content, digital marketing campaigns, site designs and more. Check out some of the best 2022 healthcare websites.

Concord Hospital

Concord Hospital, in Concord, New Hampshire, acquired two nearby community hospitals and integrated both hospital profiles into their main branded website. Their goal was to seamlessly transition and rebrand the two hospitals to operate as one system. To achieve this on their website, Geonetric created custom location landing pages for the acquired locations. These pages won a Platinum eHealthcare Leadership Award for Best Landing Page or Mircrosite, and a MarCom Honorable Mention award for Best Landing Page.

The organization also consolidated all its heart and vascular services into a single new entity — Concord Hospital Cardiovascular Institute. With most services available under one roof, the institute offers an integrated approach to treatment. For help generating awareness and attracting new patients Geonetric ran a digital marketing campaign that produced 450% ROI and won a Gold eHealthcare Leadership Award for Best Digital Marketing Campaign.

Montage Health

Montage Health, in Monterey, CA, turned to Geonetric to enhance its content efforts with a new content marketing hub. Geonetric built the new content marketing hub with a design that coordinates with Montage Health’s brand and brings its quality content to life.

Since launching in November 2021, the new content marketing hub has seen an impressive increase in clicks from organic search engine results pages and organic search impressions. The site won an eHealthcare Gold award for Best Landing Page or Mircrosite, as well as Platinum MarCom award for Microsite.

SightMD

SightMD began in Long Island, and now has expanded to 40 locations throughout New York to provide patient first, state-of-the-art eye care. They wanted to rebrand and create a new website that reflected its growth, unparalleled vision services, and patient care approach. SightMD turned to Geonetric to be their new website developer. Geonetric led their content and design strategy for their revamped new digital experience on our easy-to-use platform, VitalSite.

SightMD needed to create brand awareness and grow patient acquisition for all SightMD states. Geonetric’s content strategists created a scalable site navigation that easily accommodates regional expansion to different states and allows users to access all the services, doctors, and locations from the main SightMD homepage.

The new site took home two eHealthcare awards: Gold for Best Site Design & Platinum for Best Overall Internet.

EvergreenHealth

To spread the word about its advances in the delivery of orthopedic services, and to be recognized for its clinical expertise, EvergreenHealth in Kirkland, WA partnered with Geonetric for a redesign and content overhaul.

Geonetric gave the site a modern look that reflects the health system’s cutting-edge care and increases their brand recognition for their clinical expertise. Seventy pages of extensive, patient-friendly content about orthopedic and sports medicine services were created by Geonetric’s content strategists and writers. Since the added content was published, traffic and user engagement has steadily risen.

In the first full quarter after the new site launched, EvergreenHealth saw improvements on many metrics, including total site sessions, organic traffic, pages per session, and bounce rate, as well as an increase in provider profile sessions. For this the site won:

• MarCom Award for Healthcare Content, Gold
• MarCom Award for Redesign, Gold
• Ragan Award for Patient-Focused Content, Honorable Mention

Faith Regional

Faith Regional Health Services is a faith-based healthcare system in Norfolk, Nebraska. With target audiences searching for healthcare services on the go, Faith Regional wanted a website with a mobile-first design. Partnering with Geonetric, they redesigned the site for mobile users. Their new digital landscape provides mobile users with responsive and streamlined sitewide navigation, a layout that follows trends in mobile UX, and new functionality that uses geographic targeting for personalization. The site won an eHealthcare silver award for Best Mobile Website.

Cone Health

Cone Health is a not-for-profit healthcare network serving people in several counties in central North Carolina. As part of its employee recruitment efforts, the organization partnered with  Geonetric  on building an engaging, user-friendly website designed to highlight the benefits of working at Cone Health and make it easy to find a position and apply. The health system also wanted the microsite to support staff retention by providing resources for current employees to advance their careers.

Geonetric’s writers and designers created a new engaging and accessible microsite with streamlined navigation and content. Because Cone Health wanted the new site to target current employees as well as job candidates, Geonetric recommended moving employee benefit and wellness information from the health system site into the careers microsite. Both prospective and current employees now can visit just one site for all the information they need to manage each phase of their Cone Health career.

In the first quarter after the site launched, sessions nearly doubled, increasing 93%. The new job category pages are among the highest-viewed content and some of the biggest drivers of clicks to the job search page. This site won an Honorable Mention MarComm award for Microsite.

2021 Award-Winning Healthcare Websites

The 2021 healthcare award-winners all let digital strategy take the leading role in meeting their users’ expectations and top their competitions. Read on for more details.

University Health

University Health, in San Antonio and Bexar County, Texas, launched a new website that delivers personalized content to target audiences and builds its brand as an academic health system.

The site, built on Sitecore, won:

• eHealthcare Leadership Award for Best Overall Digital Patient Experience, Platinum
• eHealthcare Leadership Award for Best Site Design, Distinction
• MarCom Award for Writing – Web Content, Platinum
• MarCom Award for Website – Medical, Honorable Mention

PIH Health

PIH Health, in Whittier, California, launched a new website that delivers its reimagined web presence to ensure the site tells a system-centric story in a consumer-friendly way.

The site, built on VitalSite, won:

• eHealthcare Leadership Award for Best Internet Home Page, Gold
• MarCom Award for Website – Medical, Platinum
• MarCom Award for Writing – Web Content, Gold
• Ragan’s PR Daily Awards, Patient-Focused Content – Health Care PR and Marketing, Finalist

EvergreenHealth

EvergreenHealth, in Kirkland, Washington, launched a new website with a data-driven strategy to meet the unique needs of their tech savvy community.

The site, built on VitalSite, won a MarCom Award for Website – Medical, Gold.

Acclaim Physician Group

Acclaim, in Fort Worth, Texas, launched a new website that makes it easier for patients to find a provider using a new content management system (CMS).

The site, built on VitalSite, won a eHealthcare Leadership Award Winner for Best Site Design, Platinum.

In 2020, Acclaim received an honorable mention from the MarCom competition in the Website – Medical category.

Fisher-Titus

Fisher-Titus, in rural Ohio, launched a new website with a modern design, improved navigation that helps site visitors easily navigate and understand the breadth of health services available throughout the Fisher-Titus medical center.

The site, built on VitalSite, won:

• eHealthcare Leadership Award for Best Site Design, Gold
• MarCom Award for Website – Medical, Honorable Mention

Virginia Hospital Center

Virginia Hospital Center, in Arlington, Virginia, launched a new website to deliver a new responsive design and sitewide navigation with healthcare-specific functionality to make it easier to search for and select providers, locations, classes, and services.

The site, built on VitalSite, won:

• eHealthcare Leadership Award for Best Landing Page or Microsite, Platinum
• MarCom Award for Website – Medical, Honorable Mention

Avera

Avera, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, launched a new foundation microsite and Intranet that were both user-centric and leverages the strength of their brand.

The intranet, built on VitalSite, won:

• MarCom Award for Web Element – Intranet, Gold

The foundation microsite, also built on VitalSite, won:

• eHealthcare Leadership Award for Best Landing Page or Microsite, Platinum
• MarCom Award for Web Element – Microsite Information, Honorable Mention

Mary Greeley Medical Center

Mary Greeley Medical Center in central Iowa, launched a new microsite for its William R. Bliss Cancer Center to strengthen the brand and highlight its differentiators when it comes to cancer care.

The site, built on VitalSite, won:

• MarCom Award for Web Element – Microsite Information, Gold.

Montage Health

Montage Health, in Monterey, California, launched a new website to enhance their digital presence to strengthen their brand as an innovative health and wellness system.

The site, built on VitalSite, won:

• MarCom Award for Website – Medical, Gold
• MarCom Award for Writing – Web Content, Honorable Mention

Ozarks Healthcare

Ozarks Healthcare, in West Plains, Missouri, launched a new website to create an inviting, easy-to-navigate website that communicates the full continuum of care and medical services.

The site, built on VitalSite, won a MarCom Award for Website – Medical, Gold.

2020 Award-Winning Healthcare Websites

Streamlined designs, a focus on user experience, and improved functionality– particularly around the provider directory, are common features in many of 2020’s winners. Check out some of 2020’s best healthcare websites.

ProHealth Care

2020’s big winner was ProHealth Care. Headquartered in Waukesha, WI, ProHealth Care’s new site is built on Geonetric’s VitalSite, boasts a new, streamlined design and improved navigation, and was WCAG 2.0 accessible at launch.

The site took home many awards in 2020, including four from eHealthcare Leadership Awards: Platinum award for Best Site Design, gold award for Best Overall Digital Experience, gold award for Best Doctor Directory, and silver award for Best Internet Home Page. The site also received a gold award in the MarCom awards in the Website -Medical category.

Silver Cross Hospital

Silver Cross Hospital, New Lennox, IL, consolidated numerous sites into one, built on the VitalSite content management system (CMS). With a pre-built theme as the foundation, the site was quicker to launch while still benefiting from decades of design, development, information architecture, and content strategy best practices. The theme is responsive, fast-loading, and accessible. The selected theme was modified to support Silver Cross Hospital’s unique brand and approach to care.

The site took top honors in the MarCom competition with a platinum award. It also received a silver award in Best Site Design in the eHealthcare Leadership Awards.

East Tennessee Children’s Hospital

Headquartered in Knoxville, TN, East Tennessee Children’s Hospital is the only regional pediatric center in Tennessee accredited by the Joint Commission. Built on VitalSite CMS and showcasing a unique, custom design with detailed illustrations, East Tennessee Children’s Hospital’s new site engages site visitors with an intuitive user experience and improved functionality, becoming a celebrated new digital front door for the organization. The design also features custom graphics that bring unique artwork from inside the hospital to life on the website. The site received an honorable mention award from the MarCom competition in the Website-Medical category.

Grand River Medical Center

After recent mergers, Grand River Medical Center in Dubuque, IA needed a new website. The new site is built on VitalSite Essentials, a CMS platform developed with medical groups in mind — and improves the medical centers’ mobile experience with a responsive design. In addition, the site has an improved search and navigation, an updated provider directory, new user-focused content, and eye-catching calls to action. Grand River Medical Center’s site received an honorable mention award from the MarCom competition in the Website-Medical category.

Ridgeview

Ridgeview is an independent, nonprofit, regional health care system serving the southwest metro region of the Twin Cities. Ridgeview’s new site is built on VitalSite and boasts a high-quality digital experience that is consumer-focused and user-friendly for all audiences across the Ridgeview system. The new navigation makes it easier for consumers to find services and resources. The site received a gold award from the MarCom competition in the Website-Medical category.

Mary Greeley Medical Center

Headquartered in Ames, IA Mary Greeley Medical Center is a 220-bed regional hospital that provides healthcare to residents in 13 counties. The new website is built on VitalSite and delivers an updated, modernized experience with dropdown navigation menus with icons. Through a hero video, eye-catching icons, and large fonts, the homepage highlights patient care, patient stories, and promotes the First Nurse Call Center. The site received an honorable mention award from the MarCom competition in the Website-Medical category.

Pacific Diagnostic Laboratories

Pacific Diagnostic Laboratories (PDL) needed a new web presence that offered a more robust location directory, engaging, patient-focused content, and made it easy for the PDL team to keep the site up-to-date. The Santa Barbara, CA-based organization worked with Geonetric to design and develop a more modern site on the VitalSite content management system. New navigation and content are audience-focused, and the site’s new location directory delivers important information to site visitors.  The site received a gold award from the MarCom competition in the Web Element-Microsite category.

2019 Award-Winning Healthcare Websites

From journey maps to user research to accessibility, big winners from 2019 tackled important initiatives with their websites. Check out some of 2019 best healthcare websites.

Cone Health

Cone Health, headquartered in Greensboro, NC, launched a new site that remained true to their patient-focused values. Cone Health invested in research to better understand how users interacted with their website before the redesign as well as during development—which paid off exponentially. The site seamlessly integrates their access to care initiatives into the homepage banner, guiding users as they explore traditional and new care options.
The site, built on VitalSite, took home many of the industry’s biggest honors, winning Website of the Year from Modern Healthcare, platinum for Best Internet Homepage in the eHealthcare Leadership Awards, and was a finalist for Ragan’s Health Care PR and Marketing Awards. In addition, Cone Health’s site also took come gold in the MarCom awards in the Website-Medical category.

Cape Cod Healthcare

Cape Cod Healthcare in Hyannis, MA launched their new site in January of 2019. The organization invested in user research and took particular care with integrating their popular content marketing hub into the new, redesigned site built on the VitalSite platform.

The site immediately started winning awards, including Best Redesign from HITMC, silver award for Website Campaign of the Year from Modern Healthcare, distinction for Best Overall Internet in the eHealthcare Leadership Awards, platinum from MarCom in the Website-Medical category, and was a finalist for Ragan’s Health Care PR and Marketing Awards.

Adventist HealthCare

Headquartered in Gaithersburg, MD, Adventist HealthCare launched their new website in February 2019 on the VitalSite content management system (CMS). A patient journey approach was applied to every element of the redesign project, driven by content strategy and content development efforts that prioritized usability, conversions, and Adventist HealthCare’s brand.

The site took home impressive honors including platinum for Best Interactive and Best Internet Homepage in the eHealthcare Leadership Awards, honorable mention from MarCom in the Website-Medical category, and was a finalist for Ragan’s Health Care PR and Marketing Awards and HITMC’s best redesign.

North Mississippi Health Services

North Mississippi Health Services includes community hospitals in six locations throughout north Mississippi and northwest Alabama, as well as a network of more than 45 primary and specialty clinics. The organization launched a new website on VitalSite that offers a patient-friendly experience, makes it easier to interact with the organization, and presents a unified presence for the system.

The system won two prestigious awards, including gold for Best Site Design from eHealthcare Leadership Awards and gold from MarCom in the Website-Medical category.

LMH Health

Having just rebranded from Lawrence Memorial Hospital to LMH Health, the Lawrence, KS-based health system launched a new website on the VitalSite CMS that demonstrated the breadth and depth of their expanded system.

The new site took home three impressive awards, a platinum in the Best Internet Homepage category and a silver in the Best Doctor Directory category, both at the eHealthcare Leadership Awards. The site also won a gold from MarCom in the Website-Medical category.

MaineGeneral

MaineGeneral, Augusta, GA, launched a new site that presented a more unified system-centric approach to site visitors, improved functionality, and created more patient-friendly content.

The new site, built on VitalSite, received an honorable mention in the MarCom awards in the Website-Medical category.

Olmsted Medical Center

When Olmsted Medical Center (OMC), Rochester, MN, set out to redesign their website, they had traditional redesign goals like improving navigation and making the site more user-friendly and more mobile-friendly. The organization also had another, less-traditional goal: make life easier for the individual who manages all aspects of OMC’s website.

Built on VitalSite, their new site meets all those goals and took home an honorable mention at the MarCom awards in the Website-Medical category.

Pella Regional Health System

Headquartered in Pella, IA, Pella Regional Health System took a mobile-first approach to their new site to meet the needs of their growing mobile audience.

The new site received an honorable mention in the MarCom awards in the Website-Medical category.

Concord Hospital

Headquartered in Concord, NH, Concord Hospital’s new website puts the patient first, presents a new system-centric content strategy and works to expand their regional presence. Built on VitalSite, the new site received a gold from the MarCom awards in the Website-Medical category.

2018 Award-Winning Healthcare Websites

Each year hospital websites launch that take user experience to new levels, whether through design, content, or functionality. Check out some of 2018’s top performers.

Essentia Health

Essentia Health, headquartered in Duluth, MN, launched their new site in May of 2018 with a mobile-first design and industry-leading functionality that includes open scheduling for new patients and ER and urgent-care scheduling and wait times.

The site immediately started taking home top accolades from some of the most prestigious competitions in the healthcare industry. Essentia was recognized by Ragan’s Health Care PR and Marketing Awards as a finalist for their Website Launch or Relaunch of the year. This awards program seeks out the innovators in the industry and found one with Essentia.

Their website, built on the VitalSite® content management system (CMS), received a sought-after Modern Healthcare IMPACT Award, taking home gold for Website Campaign of the Year.

And finally, Essentia received platinum in the Best Overall Internet Site category at the eHealthcare Leadership Awards, which are given out every year during Greystone.Net’s Healthcare Internet Conference.

Firelands Regional Health System

Firelands Regional Health System, Sandusky, OH, redesigned with the hope of presenting a more consolidated brand experience to the market, as well as to move to VitalSite, a more user-friendly CMS. They didn’t set out to win awards, but with their new responsive site and integrated blog, that’s just what happened.

Firelands took home a Best in Class at the Interactive Media Awards, the highest honor bestowed by the organization. The site also received a silver for .

Mercy Medical Center

When Mercy Medical Center, Cedar Rapids, IA, redesigned their site in 2018, they employed user testing and heatmap analysis to drive redesign decisions and help them use the web to grow traffic to new and existing services with a focus on promoting urgent cares.

The prelaunch efforts paid off as Mercy took home two top honors, including a Best in Class from the Interactive Media Awards and platinum for Best Site Design at the eHealthcare Leadership Awards.

Sturdy Memorial Hospital

Sturdy Memorial Hospital, Attleboro, MA, needed to consolidate numerous microsites into one responsive site that offered improved functionality. And, they needed all this to be built on a more user-friendly CMS.

With their redesign, they achieved all of that and more, winning a 2018 Lamplighter Award from the New England Society for Healthcare Communications and an Outstanding Achievement from the Interactive Media Awards. In addition to the overall redesign, it was important to Sturdy Memorial to create a flexible landing page to use for campaigns — and that landing page went on to win an Honorable Mention in the MarCom Awards.

Stamford Health

With the goal of presenting a more unified system presence, Stamford Health’s new site streamlines Stamford Hospital, Stamford Health Foundation, and Stamford Health Medical Group content areas, improving navigation and the overall user experience.

The site delivers a modern feel with patient-centered photography and the home page took home platinum for Best Internet Home Page from the eHealthcare Leadership Awards.

Tower Health

Reading Hospital set out on a website redesign to align their doctors, locations, and brand — and they wanted a CMS that gave them room to grow. Everything was progressing well, and then right before launch, the organization acquired five community hospitals. Reading Hospital became Tower Health and they needed to update the site quickly — and thanks to the flexible design and navigation it was easy.

The new, consolidated site went on to win a Best in Class from the Interactive Media Awards.

Gundersen Health

An early mover in the content hub space, Gundersen Health, La Crosse, WI, redesigned their wellness hub in 2018 to refresh the design, add social sharing functionality, better incorporate video, and use panels to feature news and better promote providers. The new health and wellness hub is a hit with users as well as judges, with the site taking home a gold in the Digital Medical Website category of the MarCom Awards.

Genesis Health

Looking to promote their BirthCenter, Genesis Health, headquartered in Davenport, IA, created a landing page that shares family stories and lets site visitors take a virtual tour or create a birth plan. The landing page also promotes the organization’s expert staff and has fun interactive features and information, including the 2018 top Genesis baby names. The landing page received an Honorable Mention in the landing page category of the MarCom Awards.

Altru Health System

Altru Health System, located in Grand Forks, SD, was one of the first hospital websites to go responsive in 2013 and took that dedication to exceptional mobile experiences to a new level with their 2018 redesign. The new site features flyout menus and integrates their blog feed into the homepage and service-line pages. The site took home a gold in the Digital Medical Website category at this year’s MarCom Awards.

2017 Award-Winning Hospital Websites

Avera Health

Avera, headquartered in Sioux Falls, SD, has a storied history of creating award-winning marketing and design. And 2017 was a great year for their team.

They were the recipients of the prestigious Modern Healthcare IMPACT Award. This award recognizes outstanding healthcare marketing campaigns that are reinventing the way audiences receive and retain healthcare information. This year, they honored Avera Health with the award for Website Campaign of the Year for their main website, which is built on the content management system, VitalSite. The MarCom award competition also took note of their site, and awarded the organization a Gold in the medical category for their website.

This year the team invested in a new online hub to enhance their content marketing efforts and improve SEO. Site visitors aren’t the only ones who love this content marketing hub, it took home a Platinum award for Best Social Network from the eHealthcare Leadership Awards, which were awarded at the 21st Annual Greystone.Net Healthcare Internet Conference in Austin, TX.

Gundersen Health

Based in La Crosse, WI, Gundersen Health serves patients in 19 counties across three states. They recently launched a new system-centric site and rolled numerous microsite into one, responsive health system site.

Their site visitors aren’t the only ones that have noticed how impressive the new site is. The site took home a Best in Class accolade at the 2017 Interactive Media Awards.

In addition to the overall site, Gundersen Health created custom provider profiles with ratings and reviews to help site visitors connect and engage with their more than 1,000- high-quality doctors. The system’s provider directory recently took home a Distinction for Best Doctor Directory from the eHealthcare Leadership Awards.

Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System

Prior to redesigning their homepage, Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System worked with our team to do some digging into user statistics. Using scroll mapping and heat mapping, they identified numbers areas for improvement, particularly around main and secondary navigation. They also found places to improve page load and site speed as well as adding more strategic calls to action.

The result? A new homepage that is visually engaging and user-focused. Since launching the new homepage design, Spartanburg Regional is enjoying decreased bounce rates and increase in mobile site visitors. And, they recently took home a Silver for Best Internet Homepage from the eHealthcare Leadership Awards.

Cone Health

With an organizational focus on enhancing their content marketing efforts and embracing the “create once, publish everywhere” mantra, Cone Health reached out to their digital partner to help them create a new content hub. Branded Wellness Matters, the hub showcases many different content types, including videos, blog posts, and testimonials. Built in their healthcare-specific CMS, it also has a sophisticated taxonomy structure that allows it to filer by topic and content type. It also includes SmartPanels that pull in social media feeds. The hub received a Gold from the MarCom Awards.

UNM Health System

Previously UNM Health System, associated with the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center (UNM HSC), maintained separate websites for UNM Hospital, UNM Sandoval Regional Medical Center, UNM Medical Group, and other health care entities. Some sites had minimal information architecture and inconsistent navigational menus that could leave users feeling lost. And none of the sites referenced UNM Health System, a newly branded system.

That’s why they worked with us to create a new, responsive site offering a clear, consistent information architecture that makes the site easy for users to navigate and for the UNM HSC web team to manage. Creating a single, new website also provided an opportunity to rewrite and develop user-friendly content.

The new site received a Distinction at the 2017 Interactive Media Awards. The site’s new user-focused content didn’t go unnoticed either, receiving an Honorable Mention in the Web Content category at the MarCom awards.

Rutland Regional Medical Center

Rutland Regional Medical Center is a regional system located in rural Vermont. The health system hadn’t redesigned in four years and was ready to modernize the site design and go responsive. The new, responsive site offers large hero images, clean navigation, and clear bold calls to action. It received a Distinction at the 2017 Interactive Media Awards.

UNC Physicians Network

UNC Physicians Network turned to us to develop a site that builds off of the already established digital foundation for UNC Health but gives their more than 50 practice locations a dedicated area for their story. The site received an Honorable Mention in the medical category of the MarCom awards.

Adventist Medical Group

How to brand a medical group is a top question facing many healthcare marketers today. For one award-winning example, check out Adventist Medical Group. The site features engaging provider profiles and custom location pages. The medical group also worked with us to create user-focused service line content. The site received an Honorable Mention in the medical category of the MarCom awards.

Asante

Blogging is a popular way to engage your target audience and help search engine rankings at the same time. Asante launched a blog to share special moments, health tips, and recipes with their Medford, OR community. The MarCom awards were impressed, giving Asante a Gold in the Social Media category.

Award-winning design and development for healthcare

Award-winning web design and development is about more than just using eye-catching imagery or the latest trends in rollover effects. All of these healthcare organizations worked with Geonetric to ensure their sites not only bring their brands to life online but have a strong technical foundation that takes everything from accessibility to page load speed into consideration.
Ready to start your next award-winning project? Questions about anything you’ve seen here? Drop us a line. We love talking shop.

Healthcare has traditionally been optimized for the operations of the provider organization and the demands of payers. But future success requires a monumental shift and a new laser focus on supporting consumers in their healthcare journeys.

As a result, many healthcare organizations are reimagining their view of the digital experience and are building a true digital front door. To make it happen will require bold change and rethinking every digital encounter.

Download this eBook and get insightful guidance on building your digital front door, including how to:

• Reimagine the digital experience and create a truly user-centered view of the healthcare experience as it exists today – and the experience people want in the future
• Support patients and consumers in a personal, seamless way that makes communication consistent, enables self-service and prevents abandonment
• Improve performance through data-driven operational changes across the enterprise
• Reap the rewards in terms of patient acquisition, retention, and lifetime value

Developing an integrated digital marketing strategy involves understanding all aspects of the consumer funnel because each digital channel and tactic provides unique benefits at different points in the user journey. In this webinar we highlight how paid search, search engine optimization and business listings help you own all aspects of a search engine results page when all are considered equally.

Geonetric’s 2022 Consumer Health Survey Report helps healthcare marketers like you get new insights and see where you need to invest to stay competitive in 2023. This research is part of an ongoing initiative to better understand the preferences and perceptions of health consumers relating to their use of technology throughout the healthcare journey.

Consumerism has been a growing force within healthcare and healthcare providers are under more pressure than ever to meet the expectations of health consumers. At the same time, health consumers have a growing array of care options, many of which are digital or have digital components.

As healthcare systems work to craft their digital front door strategies, this information should help you address consumer desires and meet them where they want you to be.

What Google is trying to achieve with the helpful content update

The new helpful content update from Google promises a robust people-focused change to how users search. Artificial intelligence takes a greater role in what appears on search engine results pages after being trained to think and analyze like the average user.

Educating artificial intelligence to be a much smarter version of traditional search algorithms serves three purposes:

• Ensuring the user receives the most accurate content for their search query.
• Removing irrelevant, false and harmful information from the first page of results.
• Allowing newer, more relevant sites and pages to rise in ranks faster than previously possible.

Google says that based on its testing, the update will have a greater initial impact on online educational materials, arts and entertainment, shopping, and tech-related content. This impact is due to the much higher amounts of accessible content for these industries. That does not mean the update will overlook healthcare.

Artificial intelligence never stops learning; as this update ages, it will become more refined and broad-reaching. It is not a matter of if; it’s a matter of when.

Sitewide analysis

One of the most interesting elements of this update is that it targets the whole site rather than individual pages. It will no longer be enough to hide lower quality, unoptimized content on separate pages to avoid dragging down stronger pages. Likewise, creating several pages irrelevant to the user to attract higher rankings is even less of a valid tactic than before.

The entire site must provide a strong, quality experience. This means you must address every aspect of your content to ensure success.

Over 50 possible points of impact when measuring helpful content

An important first step in identifying the most likely impacted content would be to study what Google believes should be considered when measuring content.

So far, Google has mentioned over 50 indicators of what constitutes helpful content across several title updates, including the helpful content update, product review update, core update and panda update.

The majority will have some impact on healthcare organizations. The key themes that Google appears to be stressing are your audience, expertise, credibility and the users’ wants and needs.

Artificial intelligence provides increasingly relevant results

To provide people-first rankings, Google turned to training artificial intelligence. This allows for a much more nuanced, relevant search experience than traditional search algorithms. In many ways, this method achieves what the search is intended for with greater accuracy—giving the most relevant results to the user.

The amount of content on the internet makes it necessary for search engines to rely on increasingly sophisticated systems. This ensures that the content that ranks in the top spots is accurate and helpful.

Artificial intelligence continues to learn even after launch, making it increasingly difficult for poor or false content to trick its way into the top search results spot. It’s an organic system. Even if something accidentally ranks, that might change next week.

This is not Google’s first use of artificial intelligence. However, it is their largest and a clear sign that this is the direction of updates moving forward.

We can’t predict the long-term ramifications of thinking algorithms. Still, we can confidently say that these early stages will cause massive fluctuations, traffic spikes, and declines for many organizations.

Reduced findability impacts conversion rates

If you have not kept up to date with optimization best practices, this update might hurt more than others because it’s redefining your findability.

If Google believes that your site no longer offers the most relevant or beneficial content, you will see fewer conversions. That’s because users will have a harder time finding your services when searching for local healthcare options. Pages that once ranked in the top spot in search engine results pages may now rank lower or completely vanish from the first page.

If you haven’t already, now is a great time to analyze your current data. Traffic fluctuations will have a ripple effect on all forms of conversions. This includes on-site data like phone inquiries, phone scheduling and online scheduling. It also impacts off-site data through how many users call, seek directions, or visit the site through business listings.

Consider every data point.

Ensure findability

How can you ensure that your findability optimization remains high-quality or benefits from the helpful content update? Use these steps:

• Refresh your local keyword portfolio
• Ensure that page titles and meta descriptions are updated regularly
• Refresh business listings to reflect on-site information
• Optimize for the three key tenants of local:
  • Locality
  • Relevancy
  • Actionability

The more hyper-local you can be with your on-page and meta content, the more relevant your site appears to Google. If your site currently lacks actionability, locality and relevancy, you could be accidentally competing with national brands and terms that do not serve your local audience. Appearing for the wrong search terms, outside of your coverage area can significantly impact your organic reach.

Likewise, suppose your business listings become out of sync with on-site location and provider information. In that case, Google will determine that these listings are low quality and refer users to your competition instead.

SEO experts are split on the Update impacts

As with any algorithm update, the impact will differ for every site, and it may take days or months to start seeing changes. Some experts in the field claim that the update has already rolled out for their site, and they see minimal traffic fluctuations. Meanwhile, users in the article’s comments report drastic drops in their overall user base.

While the update is still fresh and fully rolling out in the first days of September 2022, the consensus is that there is no consensus. The only absolute for this update is to take inventory of your current on-page and meta content, determine weaknesses or gaps and optimize your most important service lines, locations and providers.

Make sure your target audience will see your content

Determine whether your website content will outlive the helpful content update. We believe you can address the greatest shifts in findability by asking these content strategy-focused questions:

• Does each section and page serve the user’s needs?
• Does your site have an audience that would find the content useful if it came directly to you?
• Does the content serve the genuine interests of visitors, or does it guess what might rank well in search engines?
• Is the content written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well?
• Does the content provide unique, insightful analysis or interesting information that the user cannot find anywhere else?
• Is the content easy to read and understand?
• Would you feel comfortable trusting this content for issues relating to your health?
• Is the content optimized to answer actual user questions so that someone reading the content leaves feeling like they’ve had a satisfying experience?

Answering “yes” to these questions means you’re probably using a people-first approach to your content strategy. Answering “no” to any of these questions means you must rethink your strategy and the content you’re creating.

Remember, high-quality content in one place and low-quality content in other places could keep your site from a high SERP ranking. Google wants your content to go beyond the bare minimum yet remain concise. Your organization must provide as much context as possible without going off-topic. This balancing act requires a sound content strategy to succeed.

Developing and maintaining high-quality content

Performing a content audit can help determine if your website has content gaps and opportunities to improve by demonstrating your expertise on healthcare topics. During the audit, consider whether your content follows best practices for web writing. That means you keep your content simple and understandable, scannable, user focused, optimized for search, and accessible.

Use natural language

Web writing best practices will also cover the Updateupdate’s emphasis on using natural language. Google can better understand when content relies heavily on targeting keywords at the expense of sentence and header structure.

Reflect on the main goals of your previous content optimization efforts. A major red flag would be if you were trying to integrate as many arbitrary keywords as possible. This is where seeing content through a user’s eyes can be particularly beneficial.

Seek user feedback about your content

Data does not always tell the whole story about your website content. Evaluate your content’s usefulness to real people through a user feedback form or user testing. This approach helps you gather qualitative data to determine if your content is helpful.

Next steps for your organization

If all of this seems overwhelming and potentially revolutionary, you are right. As Google and other search engines increase the integration of artificial intelligence, the deeper we reach into unknown territory.

The most important first step is a thorough, thoughtful optimization audit that considers findability, content strategy and technical SEO for the user experience. Without this, you will be guessing which content is already helpful. Often, we take the user for granted when determining what works. This is especially true when organizations are stretched thin and need to focus on many different pain points simultaneously.

Enlisting the help of an external agency can be extremely beneficial. Not only are you acquiring the aid of experts in the field, but you are also bringing fresh eyes to your site that may see what familiarity hides.

The experts at Geonetric provide a collaborative partnership in every step of the optimization process, including assessments, creation and optimization of findability and content, user testing and overarching user experience audits. Rather than taking on the full weight of this update on your own, reach out and let’s discuss your specific needs.

Consumers increasingly value their experience with a brand as much as the products and services themselves. And with brand loyalty seeming to have disappeared, it’s more critical than ever to create targeted, personal experiences that boost the results of your marketing efforts.

However, for healthcare marketers personalization can seem like an overwhelming topic. Sensitive topics and privacy concerns can add friction to the process. And it can be difficult to implement and operationalize the conversion points that tell a digital marketer what success looks like.

Whether you’re considering your first steps into personalization or are experiencing challenges further along your personalization journey, this webinar will give structure to the various approaches to personalization and demonstrate how to identify the tactics that have the most potential to deliver value.

This makes it more important than ever for healthcare to fully break down the digital roadblocks of the past and find new ways to serve today’s consumers. We all love consumers, just like we love our children, but it doesn’t mean that they aren’t accustomed to have the world at their fingertips.  

And in healthcare, there’s even more reason to keep a competitive edge. With a growing number of healthcare options available, healthcare providers feel the pressure to stay competitive. Not only are choices increasing in the healthcare market, but loyalty is decreasing. This creates a competitive advantage for healthcare companies that optimize their digital strategy to focus on user experience (UX) and keep consumers happy. Unlike our children, we can’t change the consumer, so we are forced to meet them where they are. Because if you don’t, you’re leaving money on the table and that can lead to a business that’s hurting..  

Have current consumer expectations left your  digital experience stuck in the past? If your healthcare organization needs a website redesign or new platform, here’s what to know when choosing a digital experience agency. 

1. What Kind of Digital Partner Would They Be?

When outsourcing any services, of course you want to know what doing business with this company will be like. The last thing you need is to pitch an idea to your boss, get the green light, fork out the dough, and then realize the company falls short on promises and results. Read the customer reviews, ask for references, and do your research on the company. There’s no faster moving industry than healthcare. There is no time to lose a turn and wait to roll the dice again.  There are specific needs in the digital world as well as the healthcare world. Make sure the agency you choose can provide strategy, support, and the right tools. They should be data driven, focus on consumer experience, and regardless of platform – be a strategic partner. A partner who can help you reimagine your digital front door and grow it over time. After all, a website is never done. A good digital experience agency will provide ongoing progress calls and support, digital strategy services, and technical services if applicable. Your digital partner should help you make an impact, and have a team that is dedicated to building, maintaining and growing your digital presence continuously throughout the relationship. Not just a help desk or someone taking orders. 

2. How Much Do They Know About Your Users Experiences?

Will the company need to do extensive research to understand your industry and the consumers in it? Do they support a broad range of industries, or just healthcare? If they solely focus on healthcare, it is very likely that they have already done extensive UX research specifically for the healthcare consumer. They may need to learn more about your business but finding an agency that already knows the healthcare industry leaves you light years ahead in the process.Find out more about the approach they would take with your project and custom needs. To create a new experience requires reconsidering what the healthcare consumer is trying to find, what action they need to take and how to guide their decisions along the way. User experience content strategy is the most important foundational element. Ask them what their thoughts are on UX content strategy.You want an agency that takes a holistic approach to content, information architecture and design based on UX research. Any digital agency can make things look pretty. That does no good if they don’t know the consumer journey and consumers can’t easily find what they need.

3. Do They Know Which  Platform is Best for Your Organization?

There are many things to take into consideration when choosing the best content management system (CMS) or digital experience platform (DXP) for you: organizational goals, existing websites and codebase, digital & content strategy, desired functionality & integration points, your team’s capacity & technical expertise, and competitive websites & experience. Selecting the right platform is striking a balance that works for you and your organization. Your digital agency partner should have options, understand the differences, and give you a recommendation based off your specific needs. Do you have a small but mighty team? Do you need the autonomy and power to quickly make changes on your own, but you’re not a developer? Perhaps a proprietary healthcare platform is your best option. Are you a complex healthcare system? Are you making a big investment in a more sophisticated digital experience? Do you want more developer access and input? Maybe an open-source DXP is a better fit for you. It’s not a simple formula to identify the right solution. That’s why you need an experienced healthcare agency who can guide you through the selection process because using the right tools will impact your team for years to come.  

So whether you’re a large or small hospital, national or regional health system, or medical group, the right digital strategy is vital in today’s market and having the right digital agency partner can make you stand out from the rest. The right partner can create an ongoing experience that gets better the more consumers use it, help you incorporate wellness into the experience and build a strong relationship between your brand and the consumer. Give today’s consumer what they want, an easy UX to get what they need to take advantage of your services, and watch your business grow.  

Learn more about how you can reimage your organization’s healthcare digital experience. Download the guide for healthcare leaders to build a digital front door and beyond.

Almost all sites on the internet have some form of data collection. In most cases, especially in healthcare, the goal is to collect as little potentially identifiable information as possible while still having enough to analyze user experiences. This data makes it easier to improve content, navigation and conversions. The same applies to the Meta pixel (previously known as the Facebook pixel), which is used to track engagement metrics from Facebook ad campaigns. A recent report uncovered websites that had applied the Meta pixel to their site(s) inadvertently allowed Facebook to gather sensitive data that, in some cases, included:

• Personally identifiable information (PII)
• Protected health information (PHI)

The first question that many of us and our clients asked was if the data collected was in violation of HIPAA. In at least one case, it was considered enough of a violation that a user filed a class-action lawsuit against Meta. Although it appears likely that the data collected is not in violation, many healthcare organizations are now aware of its suspicious ongoing practices. To determine the risks to your organization, we must ask what data Meta collects, when it collects the data and what you can do to prevent it from sending sensitive data.

What data does the Meta pixel collect?

Meta provides settings for customizing the specific data that it is allowed to receive. Depending on your current ad campaign settings, you might have the default setup which only collects the following:

• Information about the user’s device, web browser, operating system, and web session that are contained in HTTP headers. This includes the user’s IP address, the referring URL, page views, and more.
• Pixel-specific data including the pixel ID and the Facebook cookie.
• Button click data including any buttons clicked by the user, the labels of those buttons, and any pages visited as a result of the button clicks.
• The names of form fields on the site (e.g., ‘name’, ‘address’, ‘date of birth,’ etc.).

If you have turned on additional settings like Advanced Matching or made additional adjustments within your conversion tracking settings, Facebook may be collecting:

• Form field values for email, gender, address (city, state, ZIP code, and country), first and last name, phone number, date of birth, external ID
• Custom conversion data including URLs with their query parameter (e.g., https://www.abchospital.org/site-search/?term=cancer+treatment)

Meta has filters in place to catch and remove potentially sensitive information from query parameters. However, this data is still being sent to them in the first place.

When does the pixel collect data?

In most cases, the best practice for applying a data tracking pixel is to allow it to access all publicly accessible pages on a website in order to gain better data visibility as users move beyond your campaign’s initial landing page. If that is the case for your organization, and you have the Meta pixel deployed, any page which has the pixel code applied is collecting user data and sending data to Facebook. Just because you are not running ads on Facebook or have manually created an event for an active campaign does not mean you are not collecting visitor data and sending it to Facebook. 

How can I limit data collection?

Meta—and other organizations in the data collection industry—make it extremely frustrating to remove tracking pixels because of how much you lose. Removing the Meta pixel means you will no longer have new data to analyze through the Facebook Ad Manager platform from users interacting with your website. Conversion tracking becomes even trickier. You lose the ability to perform remarketing efforts.

However, you have ways to limit this loss as well as mitigate data collection.

Restrict data collection to specific pages/sections

It is possible to limit the Meta pixel to only fire on the pages actively receiving traffic from campaigns through the use of Google Tag Manager. Rather than allowing the pixel to be placed on the entire site, you can specify exact pages where it is allowed to trigger.

If you appreciate these topics better in a metaphorical sense: Let’s say your site is a town. Each section is a house. The Meta pixel starts out being able to enter any home, follow any person and know everything that goes on within the town. If we limit the pixel to be in just one house, it can learn about anyone who comes to visit and watch where those people go to next but it can no longer see what those people were doing before or after the visit.

Of course, being as large as they are, Meta has other methods of still retrieving data even when its scope is limited. Much of that can be disabled in your Facebook Ads Manager settings. However, keep in mind that any amount of Meta having access risks the unwanted collection of data.

Rely on external, more secure platforms to collect data

As big as the organization is, Google has many additional protections and filters in place to prevent the collection of sensitive data.

Utilizing tags and triggers in Google Tag Manager can drastically reduce the pain of removing the Meta pixel. Setting up events that detect and fire on Facebook-specific conversions allows you to then build custom reports and dashboards within Google Analytics that provides all of the same data without risking the collection of protected health information.

What to consider moving forward with data security

Data security is increasingly important for the average user. As the population becomes aware of how much of their personal information is being collected, the more often we will see reports detailing unexpected, sneaky practices.

To protect your organization, it is important to ensure that your compliance team is aware of what tags or scripts are added to your site, as well as their tracking capabilities. Perform an audit of your privacy policies. Ensure that you are protected, keeping your users informed and remaining diligent in protecting user data.

If you are uncertain if your organization has implemented the Meta pixel, unsure of how to remove or restrict the pixel, or simply want additional consultation on tracking pixels, reach out to our digital marketing experts at Geonetric. We are happy to help.

In this webinar, we will share common hurdles to measuring ROI in healthcare and how your organization can identify the logical next steps you can take to close those gaps and achieve meaningful measurement. You’ll get a data-driven look into the patient journey conversion funnel and learn new insight into connecting data pipelines. We will also cover the new hot topic of how to ensure your health system isn’t impacted by the Meta pixel’s invasive tracking practices.