Your New Hospital Website Action Plan

Learn best practices and tips for getting the buy-in you need to redesign your hospital’s website.

Let your vision for a new website flourish by using this clear, easy-to-follow action plan. When you use this guide, you’ll save time and increase your chances of approval for a website redesign. 

Your 6-step website action plan

Pitching a case to your leadership team for a new website is easy when you prepare using this solid six-step plan.

This website action plan will help you:

• Benchmark your website against competitor websites
• Define and communicate your website goals
• Demonstrate the need for a new website based on redesign and re-platform cycles
• Learn other teams’ website goals and see if yours align
• Show your commitment to staying within budget
• Demonstrate the return of investment
• Launch a new website that meets your organizational goals and web users’ top tasks

Step one: Benchmark your website

Comparing your organization to an industry leader may not have the impact you need with internal stakeholders. Instead, focus on comparing your current site to direct competitors that impact your business. Consider competitors with similar business models, competitive landscape, size and resources. If a quick competitive review surfaces several areas for improvement, you might also find the budget you need.

Here are some things to consider when benchmarking your website:

• Compare with similar web pages
• Test your website from multiple locations and devices
• Analyze your website against competitors
• Find out why your load time is what it is per page
• Look for healthcare industry specific benchmarks for website engagement metrics such as pages per session, average session duration, bounce rates on various pages, % of traffic from different channels, % of mobile traffic, and % of traffic to various sections of the website

Step two: Define your goals

There are different reasons hospitals may need a new web design and CMS. When deciding to redesign, there are many things to take into consideration. For example, your digital experience needs to accurately reflect your brand, help you achieve your business goals, be better than your competitors, and meet consumer expectations. Your site should be performing well and not leave you wanting for something more. If any of these things aren’t happening for you, it may be time for a redesign. Regardless of your motive, start by defining the goals you expect to achieve.

When creating goals for a redesign:

• Create a list of potential goals
• Determine how to measure the success of each goal
• Look for potential barriers to achieving your goals
• Identify how the plan to overcome any potential obstacles
• Review and modify your list

Another tip is to take the time to shore up communication with every department in the hospital. It can be a big challenge finding the right people to talk to. By doing it early on, you’ll know who has the information you need and gain their support as you move forward with making your goals a reality.

Step three: Create a digital front door strategy

To craft your organization’s digital front door strategy, learn about consumer needs in the healthcare journey and how to meet them where they need you to be. Figure out where you need to invest in to be competitive. In today’s market, consumers expect healthcare websites to deliver personalized experiences.

Here are some tips when creating your digital front door:

• Use the power of data. Geonetric’s 2022 Consumer Health Survey Report helps healthcare marketers understand how and where consumers want to engage with healthcare organizations using digital technology.
• Reevaluate every digital touchpoint with user experience in mind. Create a UX audit.
• Use personalization to your advantage. Consumers expect healthcare websites to personalize their experience by understanding their preferences and needs as individuals to deliver more relevant information and services.

Step four: Prove the ROI

When you outline your digital strategy, demonstrate the value of increasing your reach online. Discuss how people are currently using your site and how they expect to navigate their healthcare journey online.

The effectiveness of your website impacts your organization’s bottom line. When you have a website that meets your users’ needs, you’ll see an increase in:

• Average session duration
• Conversions
• Number of sessions
• Organic search ranking
• Organic referrals
• Overall web traffic and traffic from a specific demographic
• Pageviews

The key to proving ROI is to go a step farther than the baseline metrics listed above and tie that traffic to value and conversions. Some examples:

• Tie appointment requests to downstream revenue for targeted service lines
• Tie site traffic to the cost of paying for that traffic through online advertising
• Tie online bill pay to faster payment collection

Step five: Explain the risks of not moving forward

Stay ahead of your competition. Be sure your team understands that having competitors outperform you puts you at risk of:

• Losing traffic if your priority audiences can’t find you online
• Creating a poor user experience
• Missing the mark of meeting your organizational goals
• Losing market share of your health services
• Having ineffective brand awareness efforts makes it difficult to acquire new patients
• Losing brand loyalty

Step six: Conduct a website analysis

Here are some tips for conducting a website analysis:

• Compare your website to your competitors and note the weaknesses
• Grab screenshots that highlight areas to improve
• Keep a running record of the negative comments people have about your website
• Survey different departments on their needs from the website and include in your findings
• Anticipate objections and questions and come prepared with answers that include facts and data

Once you’ve gone through these six steps and get your approval to move forward, you’ll be ready to start planning your new site.

Plan with Geonetric

Ready to start your redesign project? Or looking for more tips? Contact us – we can help every step of the way. And if you’d like to learn more about VitalSite®, our healthcare specific CMS, sign up for a demo.

Shannon Richter
Sr. Content Manager & Writer

The original version of this page was published at:  https://www.geonetric.com/vitalsite/your-new-website-action-plan/