Over the last week and a half during the Vancouver Olympics, several of my colleagues here at Greystone and I have been held hostage during our lunch hour watching the unique and exciting sport of curling. If you’ve never watched curling, the sport is very similar to shuffleboard on ice, but with a few interesting wrinkles. A thrower from each team alternates sliding cement “rocks” down the ice, as two people with brooms follow along and try to steer it to the correct place by vigorously sweeping. Teams battle back and forth trying to be the closest to the center, knocking each others’ rocks out of the way in the process. With sliding, screaming, sweeping, and smashing, curling simply makes for great theater.
Archive for the ‘Benchmarking’ Category
The Sky was Falling
Thursday, February 18th, 2010At the height of last year’s financial struggles, Greystone.Net sent out a survey to its current and former customers about their budget outlook for the coming year. We certainly struck a chord with our hospital and health system audience, who at the time were wondering if the sky truly was falling. We received a tremendous response, with more than 170 hospitals or health systems submitting a survey. The study yielded some interesting findings. The biggest revelation was that despite 40 percent of hospitals/health systems experiencing some sort of budget cut, 68 percent said funding is stable or increasing for the Web. Based on the findings, Greystone.Net cut back on some of its events that require travel. We also added a new category to our annual Best in Class awards for successful Web initiatives amidst severe budget constraints.
The person behind that user session
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009Recently, 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.
A Tale of Two Web Sites
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009“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:
More reasons to build a mobile-friendly Web site
Monday, August 24th, 2009One 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%).
A New Home for Benchmarking
Friday, July 10th, 2009For those of you not familiar with Greystone.Net Benchmarking, this is a service I manage that allows customers to anonymously compare performance with other hospitals on key Web areas such as Web utilization and number of FTEs. Recently, I surveyed existing Greystone.Net Benchmarking customers about how we could improve the product. In their responses, two conclusions stood out: First, make it easier to see key conclusions and results. Second, reduce the amount of time it takes for users to enter data and review reports.