Hospital websites can be huge but should remain informative and easy to use for your visitors. The website can act as the face of your hospital and finding information is key to the end user. Providing them access to the information they need quickly is key to keeping them on your site and provides a positive experience the user will share and ultimately return for.
We Know You Are Busy BUT….
- Don’t Over Design Your Home Page
Avoid adding a “button” or link on your home page for every service line you offer at your hospital. Develop a schedule that ties into other marketing initiatives for specific service lines and rotate the services that get “real estate” on your home page.
- Spell check!
We’re guilty of not doing this too…we post things on our website in the midst of busy days and a multitude of client requests. So before you post new info, hit that spell check button.
- Keep Your Content Current?
Is it June and do you still have banner ads up for your Mother’s Day Health Screening event? Be sure you keep track of the content on your site that is dated or event specific. Spend some time going through your site to make sure out of date content has been removed. Many content management systems will do this for you.
- Give Your Site a Check Up
Regardless of how many people have Administrative Rights to your site, pages get moved, and links get broken. Again, it is important to audit your own site on a regular basis to ensure all links are working correctly. Think of it as a monthly “health screening” for your website.
- Keep the Clicks to a Minimum
Don’t make your site’s visitors jump through a lot of hoops to get to the info they need the most. Developing a list of helpful links that appear on each page is a great way to make sure users get where they need to go: Maps, Make an Appointment, Careers, etc. Your monthly web traffic totals will tell you what pages people are viewing the most.
- Speaking of Web Traffic…
Be sure you are reviewing your site’s analytics on a monthly basis. Get a handle on: where visitors spend the most time on your site, how long are they spending there, what topics are most frequently searched. You can garner a lot of information about your consumers by looking at your website’s traffic.
- Don’t Link Me to a PDF
Driving traffic to your website about an upcoming event or promotion? Do not, we repeat, DO NOT send visitors to a PDF of the direct mail you JUST sent them, or the ad in the paper they saw this morning. Take the time to add a page to your website that provides the relevant information visitors need AND encourage them to look around your site a little more with those helpful links we mentioned above.
Author Info
- Previous Post Social Health 2010 – Keynote Doug Ulman – #sxsh
- Next Post Hospital Websites Can Be the Voice of Reason