“From design to content, Geonetric delivers. They’ve been our partner for over a decade and have been instrumental in helping us move to a system-centric approach on the web.”
Alicia Schumacher, Director of Digital Media
Avera
Avera, a large integrated health system headquartered in Sioux Falls, SD, covers a lot of ground in the northern United States. With dozens of hospitals and hundreds of clinics serving several states, they’re the primary healthcare choice for thousands of patients and families. Before a recent redesign, flagship site avera.org captured the expanse of service locations, but didn’t make it easy for patients to learn about the wide range of services available no matter where they lived. In interviews, organization stakeholders told Geonetric they wanted to better communicate how easily patients could access all of Avera’s high-quality care and treatment from any point in their health system.
Keeping the Content That Matters Most
Avera recognized the benefit of creating system-level navigation. Duplicate content, such as services information previously found under multiple location-focused sections, was combined into a system-level story about the comprehensive and advanced care Avera delivers across the Upper Midwest. By focusing on the top-viewed pages, Geonetric helped the organization eliminate most of its 9,200 CMS pages—a number that was challenging to manage and meant some pages were hard for users to find. Even while merging a freestanding mobile site with the main site, Avera reduced CMS page count to 500, leaving only the information that matters most to users.
Consulting That Counts
Avera’s marketing team collaborated across the organization to help internal stakeholders understand and prepare for the major changes and opportunities offered by the redesigned site. In support of Avera’s open communication—a huge component of their redesign success—Geonetric’s web strategy and editorial director went onsite to join conversations, answer questions, and help the team visualize the new site structure. Using sticky notes that represented new webpages, she built out the entire site navigation on a conference room wall, making the sitemap easier for stakeholders to review and understand.
Custom Location Pages
Though site content now focuses on system-wide services over specific hospitals and clinics, Avera’s high-profile locations still have a place to tell their story. Custom location pages share visitor guidelines, quality information, contact details, and other facility-specific information. SmartPanels, a feature of Geonetric’s VitalSite CMS, automatically connect these locations with related provider profiles and services content sitewide.
Shift to System-Focused Content Highlights Breadth of Services
