More reasons to build a mobile-friendly Web site
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%).
I suspect that the respondents who feel that a mobile Web site is “not enough of a priority” are influenced by analytics reports that consistently show that only 1% of web traffic comes from users of mobile traffic, which is the case for most hospital/health system Web sites. However, we know from our Benchmarking database that the potential audience is much greater than that. In fact, several of the more sophisticated systems in the program – those with innovative and feature-rich mobile web sites – average closer to 10% of traffic from mobile devices.
It is difficult to dismiss the growing importance of the mobile population. Along with meteoric growth rates (within three years, it is estimated that more people will access the Web from a cell phone than from a PC), there is new evidence that “mobile junkies” are high income earners who are increasingly difficult to reach with conventional marketing. If your VP of Marketing comes from a more traditional background and is skeptical about the importance of the mobile audience, perhaps the opportunity to reach out to a lucrative and untapped group of potential customers will get their attention.
The good news for hospital and health system webmasters is that creating a mobile-friendly version of your Web site need not require a huge investment of time and money, and does not have to be a major organizational headache. According to our survey results, those who created a special version of their Web site for mobile users report that the average number of internal hours needed was only 62, and one in four said that they had no problems at all during construction.
If you do decide to proceed with this project, keep in mind that those who are the most successful have carefully managed the scope and the depth of what they offer mobile users. Treat your mobile-specific site as a separate entity from the main Web site, and only put things on there that make sense to use on a small device, such as contact information and directions. You should also give users a way to easily switch back and forth between the full site and the limited mobile-friendly version as needed.
Creating a mobile-friendly version of your Web site meets the needs of an audience growing in terms of size and importance, allows you to reach out to a new group of potential customers, and is less of a hassle then you might think. If it is not on the short list already, I highly suggest that you add it to projects you are considering.
One week, one developer and you\’ve got a basic mobile site. I can\’t imagine anyone sitting around a table discussing priorities who could argue why that isn\’t a reasonable investment.
Examples of what you can do in one week at Children\’s in Dallas (http://www.childrens.com/mobile/index.htm) and our version @ http://www.cooperhealth.org/mobile/.
I\’m about to start putting together a list of requirements for what we\’d like to see in our next generation content management system and the ability to easily re-pupose content for browsers based upon screen resolution is very high on the list.
Great post! When we built our mobile site we started very small and simple, contact information, find a doctor and health information. We modified our find a doctor application so that the search was simplified and the data returned was what we believed a mobile phone user would need: location, contact numbers and hours.
I think many organizations perceive building a mobile site much more difficult than it really is. I will be speaking about this topic at the 13th Annual Healthcare Internet Conference:
http://www.13healthcareinternetconference.crowdvine.com/talks/show/5391
Please attend if you are interested in mobile site development.
I think it is very important to start early and get updated especially health care and anything health matter should be up befor anybody else.
Mobile site development is a hot topic now and will be ongoing it will not go away just like computer is not going away. Those that took the time to at least know how to use it is reaping the benefits.