Offering health information or education on flagship websites increases the number of touchpoints with consumers-patients-members who are researching online during various stages of their patient-member journey. This content may exist in multiple forms and to varying extents in terms of how comprehensive it is. It can help with providing key information that educates consumers-patients and improves health as well as assist with customer acquisition and retention for healthcare providers.
Depending on the study you believe, acquiring a new customer is anywhere from 5 to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one. So if you already have a happy customer, offering additional touchpoints where they can continue to learn more about their recent diagnosis or treatment options can help with retention.
When first stepping out into this area it can be challenging to know where to start and how to bring this information, resources, and tools together on your organization’s flagship website.
There’s typically a number of initial paint points that healthcare providers-payers experience and these will be explored throughout this post together with solutions on how to overcome, including working with a team of consultants that are well experienced in delivering health-related content solutions that have relevant expertise in frequently solving these challenges for our customers.
Unfamiliarity With Third-Party Vendors
With the high volume of content that’s needed and a desire to release solutions to market sooner than later, often means providers-payers consider leveraging a third party vendor for health information content that is already written and available for use. This saves time and cuts the level of effort to create content internally. However, it does require significant research and contact with the various vendors to understand the quality of the content they have available and whether they meet the needs of what you’re hoping to achieve with this website area.
For success, be explicit in terms of the information/solution your organization seeks at a minimum, request to see samples of the information they have written to ensure it meets quality and accuracy standards, and don’t forget to ask what resources and tools they have available/coming up on their product roadmap that may meet your users needs. The latter can help expand this website area to include potential quizzes, guidelines, etc. that can ensure the needs of users are met across multiple touchpoints of their journey.
Healthcare consultants that are already familiar with the third party landscape can make recommendations on a shortlist of vendors upon understanding an organization’s needs and requirements.
Establishing Scope Of A Minimally Viable Product (MVP)
With a wide range of health-related information, resources and tools to possibly include on a flagship website, it can be confusing to know where to start. Instead of launching once all content in its entirety is available and ready, an agile approach is often preferred releasing content as it is made available. But how does one determine what the MVP is? This can vary depending on what your organization feels meets consumers-patients-members basic needs.
This could be simple as a set of prevention guidelines by gender and age, a comprehensive an encyclopedia of health conditions across a range of clinical areas, or a symptom checker tool application. Working with experienced consultants can help with journey mapping which is widely used to depict the stages customers go through when they interact with an organization. They frequently leverage empathy maps to get a deeper understanding of customers.
From understanding the gaps your organization has in meeting users needs, its important to prioritize efforts by areas that can offer the greatest added value for consumers-patients-members as well as a high level of return on investment. Experienced consultants will be able to guide the whole process and ensure you have a product roadmap that is reflective of consumer-patient-member value and ROI.
Ensuring A ‘Future Proof’ Solution
Having the right architecture on a flagship website to accommodate health-related information, resources and tools are critical to ensure it’s something that can be easily expanded upon and enhanced. Ensuring it fits in with the rest of the website structure and is easy for website users to locate as well as located in an intuitive place are all essential considerations.
Consultants can help assess existing areas on the website to house health-related content or determine whether a new website area should be created. They will be well experienced in how other organizations approach this and as well as any norms that have been formed in the industry overall.
If you’re not leveraging consultants for this effort, ensure you visit other healthcare providers and payer websites to see what the industry standards are.
Best Practices To Follow For Health-Related Content, Resources & Tools
Throughout the development of health-related information, resources and tools for consumer-patients-members, the user experience (UX) and design should be carefully considered and developed. There’s always a number of best practices you want to include that’s more than just the general UX and design guidelines. Ensuring usability and simplicity in the content you share across its various formats with some level of customization to your organization is critical.
In addition to this, focusing efforts on relevant calls to action that map the health-related content to the services your organization offers help users identify the next step in the journey and support that is available. As specialized consultants have experience in launching and enhancing these website areas, they bring with them expertise and learnings to ensure your organization can be successful from the initial launch.
These are just a few of the most common problems organizations experience when getting started with health-related content on flagship websites. These can quickly expand into integration challenges, customization of content problems and much more. Having support and guidance from a specialized, well-experienced team can ensure a smooth launch for health-related information to consumers-patients-members. In addition, it can offer guidance and assistance in how to tie in lead generation, and acquisition and retention conversion funnels.
I would love to hear about any challenges or successes you’re experiencing with the healthcare providers health-related content on your organization’s flagship website for consumers-patients-members, please comment below.
