What Are You Wishing For Next Year?
I recently helped my 3-yr old daughter prepare her wish list for Santa. What I thought would be a simple task proved to be a significant challenge, as she wanted virtually every single toy in the catalogue! I tried my best to explain to her that even though she has been very good this year, it is Santa’s job to pick out a few toys that she would like best.
Similarly, many hospital webmasters (both naughty and nice) spend this time of year going through their toy catalogues trying to determine what will bring the maximum return in the coming year. Like my daughter, they can’t have everything, but here are a couple of things that they should be asking for:
1) Google Analytics: Even if you have another web analytics package installed, Google Analytics can still serve a useful purpose by giving you another source of web information for validation purposes. For those out there still analyzing log files, it’s time to upgrade. The upside of having Google Analytics running on your site is huge: it includes about 80% of the functionality of the more robust analytics packages for free.
2) Search Engine Optimization: There are numerous ways to improve your organization’s organic search results, including updating page titles, inserting metadata and keywords, and adding ALT tags & H1 titles. All of these things can pay immediate dividends, and they cost only time for you and your staff.
3) Search Engine Marketing: At the recent Healthcare Internet Conference, there were several presentations about pay-per-click campaigns that showed unbelievable rates of return. Contrary to popular belief, this is a game that the little guys can play too. It may be too expensive for you to bid on “New York doctor”, for instance, but what about some search terms containing smaller towns near your hospital? Here’s another tip for you: many of the country’s most successful hospital web sites purchase relatively obscure clinical terms as keywords, then build extensive landing pages that help drive traffic to their specialists in these areas.
4) Formal benchmarking process: Full disclosure – I manage Greystone.Net’s benchmarking program, and have written numerous articles about this topic. Benchmarking is a mindset, and it can start simple. Run a series of Google searches on yourself for your each of your key service lines, and see where you stand vis-à-vis your competition. Is one of your chief rivals outperforming everyone else? Whether you knew it or not, you have just established a benchmark, a “standard for comparison that is a ‘best in class’ achievement.” Now you have something for you and your team to shoot for. Don’t forget to document your progress as you try to get there.
5) Usability testing: If you have never been involved with usability testing before, you would be amazed at what people find confusing or where they get hung up. One hospital that did a web redesign without any testing found that they had mashed together too much content in the center of the page. Visitors were ignoring the content in this section completey, and using the top and bottom navigation bars exclusively. Usability testing is a guaranteed to teach you some things you did not know about your website, and you shouldn’t wait till a major redesign to do it.
6) Social media presence: This topic has been well documented by my colleagues in previous Greystone.Net blog posts. Social media is happening to health care and there is nowhere to hide. If you don’t have one already, a social media plan for your hospital should be at the top of your 2009 wish list.
7) Mobile-friendly web site: Guess what, smart phones are not going away, either. At the Healthcare Internet Conference, multiple speakers demonstrated how a mobile web site could be done quickly and on the cheap. If more and more potential employees and patients are accessing your web site via their phones, and it doesn’t take much to accommodate them, what are you waiting for? For more info on how to do this, see this post by my colleague Farrah Hunt.
This list is certainly not comprehensive, but it is a good start. All of the items are either free or very low cost, and offer what I think are significant returns. Whether you have been good this year or not, I do hope that Santa will bring you some of these things. Just don’t try asking for the whole catalogue, or you will probably end up with a lump of coal.