A successful Find a Doctor (FAD) search tool is incredibly important for healthcare provider and payer websites and mobile applications. Not only is it critical to lead generation for prospective new patients but is also used frequently by physicians for referrals and academics for researching information. With so many users of this tool, it is an essential element of the healthcare digital experience for your organization to get right otherwise it can result in high abandonment, low conversion, and unsatisfactory user experience.
This is the first in a series of blog posts dedicated to exploring the fundamentals of a successful FAD search tool digital experience. While this post will share an overview of common challenges and highlight what a successful FAD search tool offers, the upcoming posts will dive deep into sharing best practices to offer a best-in-class FAD digital experience that overcomes challenges, increases conversion for new patient volumes and enhances the experience.
Common Challenges
We frequently see a consistent pattern of issues across many healthcare provider and payer websites for their FAD digital experience. These typically fall into the below large buckets:
- Displaying lengthy bulleted lists of information that are not essential to the decision-making process resulting in difficult to read doctor profiles
- Failing to convey information in a conversational, personal style/tone that simplifies information and instead gives profiles an ‘academic’ feel
- Missing opportunities from a user experience standpoint to serve information that users need to make a decision or take action upon
- Lack of best practices for search engine optimization being followed so it is difficult to find a doctor’s profile when searching outside of a flagship website or mobile app
- Gaps in data that result in inconsistent information for doctor profiles being displayed resulting in poor user experience
Some of these may sound familiar to what your organization is experiencing and common across the industry. Throughout this series, I will be sharing in-depth approaches to overcome each of these challenges.
Vision for a Successful FAD Solution
Before we dig into the best practices in the upcoming posts, we should have a shared understanding of what a successful solution looks like. At a high level, it should:
- Be easily found on the flagship website and mobile app, through marketing efforts, and Search Engine Results Page
- Offer an intuitively simple interface for finding a relevant doctor that includes search criteria and ability to refine results
- Make it easy to schedule an appointment
- Provide data with insights on how many called or scheduled an appointment and dropout points in the conversion flow
A successful find a doctor solution should encompass not only an easy to use, intuitive front-end experience but also include measurement so you can monitor the tool’s effectiveness. By connecting to an actual completed appointment this leads to full attribution.
Now we have, level-set on the common challenges and what a successful find a doctor search tool offers, the next posts will explore various aspects of the FAD search tool digital experience to share tips and best practices for your organization to adopt. Please look out for the upcoming posts.
