Good internal reporting of Web data should document successes, illuminate failures, and serve as a key component in evaluating overall strategy. Yet for many healthcare Web marketers, the challenge of producing quality reports has proven to be extremely elusive and frustrating. In my experience, most organizations do not go much further than tracking basic Web analytics metrics like page views and visitors. It is not uncommon for me to come across a mishmash of numbers pasted onto an Excel spreadsheet, with a webmaster telling me, “I am embarrassed to be showing you this report.”
Fortunately, more and more organizations are going a step further and tracking key activities on the Web, such as newsletter subscriptions or video downloads. (More on this here). A few sophisticated outfits are actually able to link their patient data with their Web data and compute ROI. The bad news is that those who are doing the most advanced reporting are generally reticent to share. This year we had to eliminate the “Best Use of Web Analytics” from our Best-In-Class Awards because of a lack of entries.
Given the importance of internal reporting as a key input to strategic decision-making, why are so many organizations stuck at the most basic level? And for those who are doing a good job, are there any insights they can share with the rest of us?
I hope to get answers to these questions and more in our next special survey, which will focus on internal reporting of Web data. I am particularly excited about covering this topic, as there is a dearth of quality research on this topic (as it related to healthcare Web marketers). If you would like to participate and are not currently a member of the Greystone.Net research panel, join today. I look forward to receiving everyone’s input, even those who are too embarrassed to show me their reports.
Now, I know mom always said it wasn’t right to brag on yourself, but go ahead and do it just this time. You deserve it. After all, we all know how hard you work and without many resources. So nominate your hospital or healthcare system for a Best in Class award.
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Yesterday, while eating a leisurely breakfast in San Diego before our Webmaster Workshop, with some fun and a little amazement, I watched crowds of people head toward the last day of the 2010 Comic-Con. Many of them – young, old and every age in between — were in ”extreme costumes” that were hard to believe. Who knew so many people actually dressed-up like the Green Hornet or Thor on any given day? Not me.
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We are pleased to release the conference brochure for the 14th Annual Healthcare Internet Conference, which will be held at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas beginning November 15-17, 2010. It took a ton of work to get the program in place, but it was also a lot of fun. Download a copy of it from our Web site. We think it is offers a wide and strong variety of educational and network opportunities.
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As hard as it is to believe, 14 years ago today — on July 14, 1996 — Greystone.Net was “born” as a new company dedicated to and focused upon helping healthcare organizations and hospitals understand this new-fangled thing that Al Gore had invented — called the Internet. There were more than a few people in the industry who thought John Eudes, Bob Noel and I (the original co-founders) were more than just a little crazy to move away from a general healthcare marketing practice to focus on Internet applications and solutions for hospitals … but we were confident the “Internet” had a big future. Little did we really know.
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It’s been a couple of weeks since Greystone’s first Webmaster Workshop for 2010. We really had a good time getting to know all of those that attended.
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I do, and so do 63.2 million others.
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As I deliberated on a topic for this week’s blog, I ended up changing my course. I had originally planned to discuss the recent social media privacy issues that have been in the main stream media, and then ran across the article, Social Media Boosts Organ Donors.
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“I don’t really pay attention to our top search terms,” says one of my customers, a marketing analyst at a prestigious academic medical center. “They are mostly just a variation of our hospital’s name.” For a lot of analysts at hospitals and health systems, especially those cursed with having an easily misspelled name, I can understand why they feel this way. Top keywords are frequently filled with various versions (both correct and misspelled) of the organization’s names and hometowns. Our research shows that across all hospitals, the average is about one in four visitors who arrive at a hospital or health system’s Web site from a search engine use some version of the organization’s name as a keyword.
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Every year, Greystone’s Webmaster Workshops are a great opportunity for us to get together and spend a few days focused on best practices and state of the Web in hospitals and health systems. Different than the annual Healthcare Internet Conference, the two-day Webmaster Workshops are a seminar format, designed for attendees to really have an opportunity to share focus on learning and networking. The schedule this year has been designed with an eye to discussing issues many individuals responsible for the Web in their respective hospitals are facing. We all always learn a lot, and hopefully you have already registered to attend and learn with us!
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