Website Makeovers for a Mobile World

By Isabelle T. Walker

Let’s face it, most middle-class and affluent Americans have an umbilical cordlike connection to their cell phones, keeping them as close to their person as their wallet and car keys throughout the day. Now, with at least 56 percent of Americans owning a smartphone, millions of consumers are a tap or two from a universe of information at all times.

Healthcare marketers are playing catch up. In the last year and a half, they’ve been noticing that more and more visits to their client companies’ webpages are coming from mobile devices––both smartphones and tablets. ComScore, an internet analytics firm, said that between December 2011 and December 2012, web usage from mobile devices grew a whopping 76 percent. Meanwhile, in that same period, across the board, health-related mobile searches rose 136 percent, more than any other single information category, according to Ben Dillon, M.B.A., vice president and self-described health evangelist at Geonetric. Mr. Dillon said that a study of traffic to the websites of the hospitals and health systems his company works with showed a 230 percent increase in visits from mobile devices from 2011 to 2012.

portrait of Mr. Ben Dilon wearing a blue corporate attire
Mr. Ben Dillon

The trend wouldn’t mean anything if the big, colorful, content-rich websites that most hospitals and healthcare systems have built for consumers functioned well on small smartphone screens. But they don’t. Scrolling is awkward and clunky. There is barely room for images, let alone lists and pull-down menus. Customers are bound to get frustrated, perhaps in a moment of need.

Healthcare companies are gradually recognizing they have to optimize their websites for mobile devices. Mr. Dillon, whose Geonetric specializes in guiding healthcare companies to user-friendly web designs, said decisions about design type and style depend on how consumers are using the site when on a phone or tablet.

The Cleveland Clinic spent a year researching and designing its newly launched mobile site. Log on to
www.my.clevelandclinic.org from any smartphone and you will be directed immediately to it. Research showed the clinic’s mobile visitors were primarily using the functional pages like find a doctor, make an appointment, and find a location, so these are the heart of the new mobile site.

“We pared it down to nine different main buttons and options,” said Tony Crimala, the Cleveland Clinic’s mobile marketing manager. There’s a find a doctor button, a button for making an appointment, and one for accessing personal medical records. Yet, even with all that, there is a way to get detailed health information, including podcasts, videos, and chats with physicians.

Mr. Crimala said early analytics are showing more traffic to both the desktop and mobile versions of the clinic’s website. He said the new site was designed by its internal web developers.

close-up of a browser searching for managinginformation

Mr. Dillon said a lot of companies are opting for responsive design, a tool that allows websites to detect what kind of device, or screen, each visitor is coming from, and adjust both its content and display accordingly. It is a little more expensive in the short run but can save money by avoiding the need to
maintain two or more separate websites at once.

For all of the emphasis on digital technology, marketers must realize that they may also be dealing with underserved populations that do not possess mobile devices and are not technologically savvy. “Parallel marketing strategies must be developed to allow a healthcare organization to reach out to these populations on their terms and through their communication channels,” notes RYAN Associates’ President Frank Leone.

For Cleveland Clinic marketers cognizant of the rapid growth in mobile-based health searches, the key was making sure they were not losing mobile customers and patients by frustrating them in their search for key information on the run. The old site “wasn’t easy to use, wasn’t easy to navigate,” Mr. Crimala said. And that, in the end, is what mobile technology is all about.

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