For healthcare organizations and nonprofits, a customized website is the cornerstone of marketing activities. Social media campaigns, print communications, and paid advertising all point your audience to your site. The caliber, functionality, and visual appeal of your site can have a significant impact on your organization’s financial performance, either in a positive or negative manner.
We’d argue that no component of your marketing ecosystem is more important. That’s because even the most effective campaign will suffer if people can’t find the information they need when they get to your site — or if the site doesn’t load properly or the plug-in appointment scheduling tool doesn’t work, or links to other pages are broken.
So it’s important to keep your website updated so it stays relevant and useful to patients and visitors. Generally, we recommend a site be completely renovated at least every five years to keep it fresh, appealing, and functional.
Your website is constantly a work in progress as your marketing and technology teams add new content, respond to outages, and update the content management system (CMS) and plug-ins. Think of that as routine oil changes for your car. But every couple of years, you need more comprehensive services like new tires and brakes.
How do you know when it’s time for a major website redesign and development?
Your organization, your users, and your team will tell you. Let’s look at some of the key signals.
When the organization itself undergoes a major shift, the website has to reflect the new direction. Healthcare institutions and community organizations are constantly evolving. When external perceptions don’t align with the new mission and values, or when the organization has merged or expanded, it’s time for a rebrand that creates a solid foundation for marketing and communication. And a website redesign that reflects the new brand is a key deliverable in the rebranding process.
How do visitors move through your website? Do traffic statistics show high bounce rates, low conversion, or slow load times? If people come to your site and can’t find the information they need, run into roadblocks, fail to schedule appointments or take the actions you want them to take, and then leave — you’ll know it.
Patients also need to trust that the information they share with you is private and protected. HIPAA and HITECH govern the collection and management of electronic health documents. And the Americans with Disabilities Act requires that websites be fully accessible by differently abled people; outdated sites may be ADA- or HIPAA-incompatible.
Improving the user experience of your site is constant work. But at some point, patches and workarounds aren’t enough. That’s especially true if your site is built on a template that limits your ability to keep it up to date or add functionality. And even more so if the site was built 10 years ago with custom code that your team can no longer maintain.
When site visitors can’t find the information they need, when hierarchy and layout don’t accommodate current messaging and priorities, when it lacks features like scheduling or mapping that people are accustomed to seeing on other sites, then it’s time for a renovation.
We run into this often with client’s websites: The CMS, plugins, and other development tools are outdated, which makes basic tasks like adding pages or posting new content a real chore for the internal team. When the site infrastructure is stuck in the past, it’s time-consuming and inefficient to adopt new design approaches and communication priorities.
If your organization’s website just doesn’t reflect its current mission, or if it always seems to be breaking down, then it’s time for an overhaul — of both the front end design and the back end systems.
At the most critical level, a modern website will build trust with your audience because they won’t run into broken links and error messages when they click on your URL. The site will inspire confidence as it looks and feels like other brand touchpoints people have encountered.
According to widely cited user preference statistics, 57% of people would not recommend a business with a poorly designed website to their peers, and 75% of people judge a company’s credibility based on the design of its website. Trust, credibility, and recommendations are hugely important in the healthcare field.
A new site will also allow you to add must-have features like easy integration with telehealth platforms and patient portals, a better directory, improved calendars or scheduling, interactive maps and location services, even chatbots to handle common questions.
Finally, a new site built on a proven CMS like WordPress or Squarespace is far easier for your team to maintain. Adding text, images, and video is a snap, and your team will have more powerful back-end tools for suggesting and evaluating keywords and metadata that are essential for search-engine optimization.
Are your users and your team fed up with your current website? Let’s talk about how we can create a better online experience for everyone.
Tenth Crow Creative is a brand marketing agency that creates, aligns, and promotes messaging for health and wellness organizations. Through insightful branding, engaging design and compelling marketing campaigns, we help these essential organizations find their identities and effectively communicate with their stakeholders so they can fulfill their missions.
