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.
“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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Health content is essential to the success of a hospital’s Web site. If a patient or user is searching for information on a particular diagnosis or treatment but are unable to find relevant information on your Web site, they will not only visit another site, but their experience may also leave a lasting negative impression of your organization. As a user, if I could not find relevant, in-depth information about bone cancer on a Web site, for example, I would assume that the hospital does not have the necessary services to treat me, or that it is simply not a very sophisticated hospital. Most purchase this type of content from a health information vendor and some even create their own content. Regardless of how it is obtained, the key is to provide some type of health content on the Web site; which can be evaluated using the following questions as a guideline:
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Greystone is pleased to announce the results of our recent survey on hospital/ health system Web budgets. We sent the survey invitation to more than 100 healthcare marketers, and received responses from 65. (please note: Greystone’s research panel is made up of hospitals or health care systems with at least one FTE dedicated to the Web, and members tend to be more “Web 2.0 savvy” than other hospitals and health systems)
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We have recently received inquiries from several hospital or health systems Webmasters who want to know our opinion about Web sites like Alexa, Compete.com, and Quantcast.com. These “third party web data providers” use proprietary algorithms to estimate the number of visitors on any Web site, and have become a major resource for many Web marketers.
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Recently, Greystone.Net was helping a client hospital with a business plan for its Web site. As part of the arrangement, we designed, launched and managed a web satisfaction study for them. This is something that we are doing more and more these days, as organizations seek to add customer input into their redesign efforts. My background is in research, so I am usually heavily involved with these engagements.
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“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.” Dickens penned those immortal words a century and a half ago, comparing the cities of London and Paris. These days, things are seldom that cut and dry – especially when it comes to Web Analytics. It is very difficult to compare two Web sites and get a clear picture. Take the following example:
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Further proof that I’m a geek: I just love Web analytics. They used to call me the Stats Hound at my last place of employment. All of which causes great amusement for my wife who knows that the last math class I took was as a junior in high school when I barely passed geometry.
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One of the things that we have blogged about consistently on this site is the need to set up a version of your Web site for visitors using mobile devices. Since this is such a hot topic in the industry right now, we decided to do a little research. Ultimately, we found that only 1 in 5 hospital / health system Web sites currently have a mobile-friendly version of their Web site. The most popular reasons cited for not creating such a site are “not enough of a priority” (55%) and “shortage of time and/or FTEs” (45%).
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It’s barbeque season, and there are few things I like better than a good barbeque. But what happens if you are at a neighborhood barbeque and you realize a group of neighbors is talking about your hospital or health system. What do you do?
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