Healthcare marketers are under more pressure than ever to deliver measurable results — often with limited budgets, small teams, and an ever-growing list of digital priorities.
The good news? You don’t need a massive overhaul to make a meaningful impact — but you don’t need to wait around feeling stuck, either.
Iterative design offers a smarter, more sustainable way to enhance your digital experiences without breaking the bank.
In these FAQs, we’ll break down what iterative design is, why it’s a game-changer for healthcare organizations, and how you can start using it to drive better engagement, conversions, and patient satisfaction.
What is iterative design?
Iterative design is the process of making small yet meaningful changes to your digital experiences over time. These incremental changes may seem minor, but they can help drive you toward reaching your marketing goals even when you can’t undertake a complete website redesign.
How can iterative design help my organization reach its marketing goals?
Iterative design is helpful for healthcare marketers because it allows you to make progress on your marketing goals even when your budget or resources are limited.
It’s also easier to get leadership on board with more minor, manageable changes that don’t require as many resources than it is to convince them to dedicate the time and money to a website redesign.
How can I tell which changes I should prioritize in our iterative design process?
The iterative design process should always begin with some sort of audit to determine what’s working on your website and what could use some improvement.
This could be as simple as targeting “low-hanging fruit” that you know has needed to be updated for a while (a cluttered navigation menu, outdated location profiles, etc.).
You could take it a step further by incorporating user experience testing to identify the goals users have on your website and roadblocks preventing them from accomplishing what they came to your site to do (not being able to find the “make an appointment” button, etc.).
I’ll still need to convince our leadership that iterative design is worth pursuing. Do you have any tips?
There are two key messages to emphasize when pitching an iterative design project to leadership: the cost and time savings compared to a full redesign and how it can benefit the entire organization, not just marketing.
Many of our clients opt to take on iterative design because it allows them to get “unstuck” and move toward their goals, even when it feels like they don’t have the money, time, or staff to do so.
Those changes can also have a ripple effect throughout the organization. For example, if your first change is to update your homepage with a straightforward appointment scheduling call-to-action, it can help bring in new patients and save time for your support teams since they won’t have to field as many appointment scheduling calls.
It’s also important to stress how even incremental changes can impact your organization’s brand and how patients perceive it when they visit your website. It only takes a few changes to take a website homepage from outdated and clunky to a modern marketing tool that shows patients your commitment to care before their first visit.
Terms to know
There are a few other marketing terms that relate to iterative design, and can help you determine the best changes for your organization to make.
Findability
Findability refers to how easily prospective patients find your organization online through search engines and, increasingly, artificial intelligence or voice assistant searches.
Your iterative design changes could work toward increasing your findability by updating provider or location profiles, making sure all of your contact information is correct, and rearranging or adding metadata to existing content so it’s easier for search engines to index.
User pathways
A user pathway is the steps a website visitor takes to accomplish what they came to your site to do, like set an appointment or find a specific provider.
A fantastic way to identify changes you can tackle through iterative design is to walk through these user pathways yourself and identify any challenges or roadblocks they may encounter.
Perhaps your main navigation menu is too cluttered, the way your search function displays results is confusing, or it takes too long to find a way to schedule an appointment online. All of these issues are individual fixes that can be remedied through iterative design.
Optimization
Iterative design isn’t a one-and-done process! You can continue to refine the changes you’ve made through optimization, where you test out how your updates are performing.
Optimization can also save you money and time in the long run since it helps you identify which changes users prefer before you roll it out across your full site.
One example of this is testing out a new appointment scheduling call-to-action. You can set up an A/B test that shows some users Button A and some users Button B, then see which button gets more clicks over a period of time. With that data, you can confidently select the button option that will most effectively drive conversions for your organization.
Ready to make a (small yet impactful) change?
If you’re struggling with feeling “stuck” in your current marketing strategy but know your organization needs to move forward, Geonetric can help.
We’ve been helping healthcare organizations introduce iterative, phased design approaches to their digital experiences for more than 25 years, and we can do the same for you.
Contact our team today to set up an introductory call to talk about bringing the power of iterative design to your organization!
