Regional healthcare system diagnoses digital pain points

A study released by the Pew Internet & American Life Project shows that 80% of internet users, or about 93 million Americans, have searched for a health-related topic online this year. 

This is a substantial increase from the 62% of Internet users who said they went online to research health topics in 2001. With more consumers going online to research health problems as well as find suitable medical providers, it’s critical for organizations providing health information and services to make it easy for consumers to find what they’re looking for. 

The largest pediatric health system in a major US metropolis knew that its website and apps were critical in attracting prospective patients and keeping current patients healthy and informed. 

The digital marketing team commenced a major transformation of its web properties to ensure a positive customer-centric experience throughout the site. Given the project's great scale and, inversely, the size of the lean team, they sought to rebuild the website template by template. 

Using this approach and relying on UserTesting for fast, targeted feedback, they could create optimized designs that could then be applied across all relevant webpages—for rapid change at scale and consistency throughout the digital experience. According to the digital marketing lead on the project,

In the case of one of the templates—the departments and programs template—we sought feedback at the beginning to figure out what’s working, what’s not working, what people like and what we need to change. We asked questions like, "Do we have the right information there? And of the information that is there, is it in the right order?"

The team leaned on the UserTesting Network to gather insights and adjust the targeting according to the specificity of the audience member they were seeking. When they wanted feedback from a more general audience, such as parents with a child living at home, they could get responses quickly by connecting with panel participants across the United States. In other cases, the team narrowed their focus to parents residing in their geographic area. Notes the digital marketing lead,

This is key because they are precisely the people who can empathize with the experience of seeking out medical care for their children in our geographic location. Feedback from this specific consumer is so relevant and therefore so invaluable.

Once the winning template design was finalized, the team applied the updated design to two department pages. After one month, one department page saw a 27.2% increase in requests for an appointment (compared to the next highest month in the last 12 months). And another department page saw an astonishing 39.8% increase in appointment requests. 

The year-over-year increases were even more impressive: 58.5% and 56.8%, respectively. This was great confirmation that the updated design was a success. And the wins kept coming as the team rolled out the new template to additional department web pages. 

Departments that transitioned to the new page layout were nearly 20% more likely to have a record-breaking month and increased conversions at 361% the rate of non-transferred departments. 

Just as the interactions between medical experts and patients are required to diagnose ailments—the first step towards remedy and relief—the UserTesting platform provides critical human insights, the first step towards understanding pain points to determine exactly how to improve digital experiences. Concludes the digital marketing lead,

It makes a difference when we hear it coming from a patient’s mouth and can share this with our business stakeholders. It’s so much more powerful and telling than if we just said it ourselves.