The Client
University of Missouri Health Care provides leading-edge care for all of Missouri and beyond. As an academic health center, MU Health Care is home to groundbreaking research that has made the organization an international healthcare destination.
The Situation
As the digital “front door” for MU Health Care, the website plays a critical role in attracting, educating and supporting patients, family members and healthcare providers. Why? 80 percent of internet users have searched for health-related information online, including 49 percent who are looking for information on particular hospitals, doctors or treatment options. Unfortunately, MU Health Care’s website did not effectively support these audiences, was built on outdated proprietary software, and needed a holistic overhaul.
MU Health Care selected Centretek (a leading provider of open source solutions for healthcare) through a competitive RFP process. After an extensive digital strategy and discovery effort, Centretek recommended Drupal as the new web content management system (WCMS) and chose Acquia as the foundation to build upon and support this mission-critical website.
The Challenge
MU Health Care’s previous website did not support a strong patient experience, failed to effectively convert prospective patients, and lacked an intuitive architecture and content strategy. Additionally, the website lacked an effective mobile optimized user experience, and had accessibility challenges. To complicate matters further, it was dependent on an outdated proprietary CMS that prohibited MU Health Care’s staff from easily managing their own website.
Beyond the technical and design limitations, the website did not effectively address consumer misperceptions and appropriately reflect the MU Health Care brand. Specifically, some consumers had outdated ideas about MU Health Care’s depth and breadth of specialty care for complex medical conditions, and the quality and age of the facilities.
The Solution
The Centretek team led an extensive discovery and strategy effort that defined the requirements for the new website and provided a roadmap for a digital engagement strategy. The new solution included the following highlights.
Solid, Secure, Scalable Foundation
The site is built on Drupal 8 and the Acquia Cloud, which provides 24-hour hosting environment monitoring and support that effectively alleviates concerns regarding site down time. Acquia also provides a scalable foundation to easily add additional websites and explore strategies for introducing content personalization via Acquia Lift.
The site was previously built, maintained and hosted on antiquated proprietary software. Moving to an open source platform and Acquia now allows MU Health Care's digital presence to grow with the organization for many years to come.
Increased Ability to Address Marketing Challenges
With Drupal, MU Health can now build flexible templates that allow for customizable landing pages. The MU Health Care team capitalized on this flexibility, working with Centretek to develop different landing pages for each of the priority service lines. These differences highlight the unique capabilities and distinctions among priority service lines, while still maintaining the feel of the University of Missouri Health Care brand.
The Centretek team delivered more than 400 pages of new consumer-driven content. Previous site content was internally focused and often driven by internal organizational structure; in addition, it was generic and didn’t highlight MU Health Care’s distinguishing capabilities as an academic medical center. The newly written content focused on addressing consumers’ need to find services related to their concern and highlighting treatment options and care specific to MU Health Care.
Innovative Care, Modern Medicine
The website’s design, UX and content strategy directly address outdated consumer perceptions. Engaging, custom shot photography and video showcases MU Health Care’s modern facilities and advanced specialty care.
From Sniffles to Surgeries
In addition to proving leading specialty care, MU Health Care also needs to market its primary care services for common health issues. The new website addresses this through prominent messaging and calls to action.
Improved search functionality
Through the combination of consumer-focused content and use of Solr, the site allows for an improved onsite search experience with faceted, predictive and phonetic search capabilities.
The Results
- 442 percent increase in “make appointment” page views
- 18% increase in average user session length
- 15 percent increase in doctor profile page views
- 23 percent increase in organic search traffic to doctor profile pages
- 11 percent increase in locations (hospitals and clinics) page views
- 19 percent increase in organic search traffic to locations pages (hospitals and clinics)
- 49 percent increase in quick care pageviews
- 32 percent increase in organic search traffic to quick care pages
- 22 percent increase in giving (donations) pageviews
- 4 percent increase in overall organic search traffic
- 13 percent decrease in overall bounce rate