As one of the best-kept secrets in southern California, PIH Health wanted to spread the word about its outstanding staff, technology, care, and amenities. The non-profit regional healthcare network—an integrated delivery system—had recently formed through the merger of a hospital, physician group, and other entities. PIH Health knew the community wanted to hear about the many services newly available through a convenient, integrated network of care close to home.

An essential tool for communicating that message? Fresh content for the organization’s new, system-wide website. The content would need to not only promote clinical services, but also strengthen the connection to an ethnically diverse community, educate patients about health and wellness, and support fundraising and employee recruitment.

Getting Started

Geonetric talked with PIH Health stakeholders to identify service lines with opportunities for growth. Then, content writers interviewed doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals to get details about specific departments’ services, approach to care, and competitive advantages.

Before writing, Geonetric worked with health system marketing staff to establish a clear and accessible writing approach intended to reach the primary PIH Health audiences, as well as a warm and welcoming, yet authoritative, voice and tone. Writers used this approach while crafting 120 pages of new copy—including content for more than 30 service lines not previously represented online, as well as pages targeted to physicians and hospital visitors.

Engaging Users

All content directly addresses website visitors with an inviting style that focuses on the benefits of choosing PIH Health for medical care, a career, donating, or volunteering. Patient-geared pages highlight healthcare professionals’ expertise, trustworthiness, and personalized care, so a diverse community feels comfortable coming to the health system. Copy is readable by visitors of varying literacy levels. Relevant geographic keywords and alternative terms optimize content for search.

Most importantly, content drives users to convert. Because PIH Health’s audience includes many immigrants who prefer to communicate primarily through word of mouth, calls to action highlight not online forms, but phone numbers that users can easily share with friends and family who have limited internet access.

Educating Patients

An extensive content section about primary care, a growing service line for the health system, advises patients on choosing a doctor and describes the importance of preventive services. Users also learn when and how they should seek a second opinion. To help shift emergency-department traffic to urgent care, a new webpage—linked from the website’s main navigation—explains how patients can determine the right place to seek care for their condition.

With a new Women’s Health Pavilion opening soon, Olmsted Medical Center (OMC) engaged in a search engine optimization project to help increase the visibility of its women’s services among health consumers in Rochester, MN, and surrounding communities. Now the new complex – complete with a new Birth Center – and the new Women’s Health Services section of the website are both getting lots of attention.

Armed with Analysis

Uncovering search patterns, interpreting searcher intent, and analyzing how users search for women’s health services in OMC’s geographical area were key to the project’s success. Armed with keyword and user analysis, the Geonetric team restructured the women’s health section to ensure all pertinent service-line content was in the same place and would be easy for site visitors to find. Because some information was missing or outdated, it was important to optimize the content for keywords and web-writing best practices.

Focus on Differentiators

As part of the content restructuring, a new women’s health landing page illustrates OMC’s expanded services and focus on delivering exceptional healthcare. The page explains why women should choose OMC for health services throughout all the stages of life. It’s also the perfect place to tell site visitors about OMC’s differentiators and lead users to the content they need in the section.

Create User-Focused Content

All of the content in the women’s health section was written or edited to align with users’ search patterns. Keyword research guided development of page titles, descriptions, link text and body copy. The copy adopts a friendly tone, drawing readers in and encouraging them to learn more about the services OMC offers.

Update the Virtual Road Map

Geonetric redirected all old URLs to the new pages so search engines and link followers arrive without issue. To further help Google re-index the content section and begin ranking the new pages more highly, Geonetric submitted the new content section to the search engine via Search Console for recrawling.

At Adventist HealthCare, health is the focus. The healthcare delivery network, which includes four nationally accredited acute-care and specialty hospitals, has been bringing health to the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area it serves for more than a century.

To promote its many educational events for the community, Adventist HealthCare needed a sophisticated online calendar on its website. Adventist HealthCare turned to agency Geonetric and its VitalSite content management system (CMS). VitalSite’s Calendar and Events Directory makes it easy for Adventist HealthCare’s site visitors to discover and register for events — and easy for administrators to create and manage hundreds of classes across the integrated health system.

Promote Wellness Events Automatically

VitalSite’s calendar provides many ways for Adventist HealthCare’s site visitors to discover events — driving more registrations and contributing to the bottom line. Visitors can browse and search for events by keyword, category, date and/or location. Integration into site search means events and classes will appear when site visitors search related terms.

The calendar also leverages VitalSite’s SmartPanel technology, allowing Adventist HealthCare to promote its events on related provider and service-line pages throughout its site. For example, when a site visitor is reading up on Shady Grove Medical Center’s comprehensive Level III-B neonatal intensive care unit, he or she will automatically see related events like the Childbirth & Baby Care Course.

Offer a Retail-Like Experience

Site visitors expect a certain type of experience when shopping online, thanks to retail giants like Amazon. And with Adventist HealthCare’s online calendar, users get exactly what they’re accustomed to. With a sophisticated shopping cart, the calendar lets visitors pay for multiple events at once. Adventist HealthCare can also offer promotions on events through online and offline marketing channels, and site visitors can easily enter those promotional codes online to receive discounts. The calendar also recommends additional classes based on a site visitor’s interests, so when a visitor registers for Discovering Motherhood, the site recommends other classes, such as Breastfeeding Class, that the visitor may be interested in attending.

Manage Event Data with Simple Administration

For Adventist HealthCare’s team, managing classes and events has never been easier. With other content management systems, it can be difficult to keep track of different classes held at different facilities. With VitalSite’s calendar, Adventist HealthCare can maintain all class and event content in one central repository and easily control where it appears on the site. In addition, staff can print class rosters and participant information, export payment sheets, and run queries to find out how many seats are remaining.

The digital strategy for a health system can get complicated fast. And when that health system is an acclaimed academic medical center with dozens of partners and affiliates, the complexity only grows.

That’s why in 2013 Chapel Hill, NC-based UNC Health made the strategic decision to create a new system brand. The organization turned to Geonetric to bring dozens of websites onto a new content management system (CMS), redesign the websites of its flagship properties to be responsive and fit with the new unified brand, as well as develop a plan for bringing additional system sites onto the scalable platform.

A System-Level Approach to Design

The integrated marketing team for UNC Health partnered with Geonetric’s expert designers to overhaul the UNC Health system site. As a potential gateway to the system, UNC Health’s site needed to tell the new brand story and make it easy for site visitors to access care across the system.

The homepage of the design features a hero banner showcasing the diversity that makes up UNC Health community and reminds site visitors that UNC Health connects them all. The design gives a prominent nod to the University of North Carolina, sporting the school’s famous Carolina blue.

To make it easy for site visitors to move from one site in the UNC Health system to another, Geonetric built a responsive rotating banner that highlights the logos of the different entities, as well as built a dropdown into the header for easy navigation.

With the design for the system site determined, the Geonetric team created templates for additional clinical entities such as UNC Medical Center, UNC Children’s and UNC Rex Healthcare, and Chatham Hospital.

With each site built on the same CMS platform and sharing a similar design aesthetic, the vision of a single system brand is becoming a reality for the UNC Health team.

A Digital Home for UNCPN

With more than 227 providers representing 48 practices – and new practices being acquired regularly – UNC Health’s growing physician network needed a dedicated digital home.

Previously, many practices had their own sites, or dedicated pages on other UNC Health properties, and it was time to create a design that allows each practice to tell its unique story while still ensuring site visitors know they’re interacting with the UNC Health system brand.

Building off of the foundation already established with UNC Health’s system site, the UNC Physicians Network’s (UNCPN) site prominently features the Carolina blue and a similar look and feel. Family-friendly images and copy greet site visitors and providers are prominently highlighted.

The star of the UNCPN site is the location page. Using a consistent template that breaks important content down consistently across the practices, the location pages give each facility a dedicated area that feels almost like its own website.

Each practice has its own hero image, custom content about the practice, and even its own contact us form. In addition, each location now offers consistent information in the “For Patients” section, where visitors can download needed forms, learn how to make an appointment, and see if their insurance is accepted. The page also boasts hours and location information, as well as images of the providers that practice at that location, but all of that content is pulled in dynamically.

Bringing Additional Sites into the Family

With the flagship properties and physician group sites launched, the UNC Health and Geonetric teams are busy building responsive sites for the rest of the system. There are still more sites to bring into the brand family, but with custom templates and a flexible CMS, the process is seamless and straightforward. In fact, the new CMS makes it easy to spin up new sites when needed, which is important for this growing and evolving system.

Owensboro Health, in Owensboro, KY, decided to take its site design in a new, bold direction. The site features an out-of-the-way hamburger menu for the navigation and unique, card-inspired design elements. The feature that steals the show is a large-format video in the background of the homepage that tells a story about the new hospital, quality healthcare, and community involvement.

Impressive Video Banner

The video on Owensboro Health’s homepage is the perfect way for the organization to present its brand, engage with visitors, and most importantly, tell its story of a comprehensive health system. With images of everything from the new building to Healthpark to babies, viewers truly get a sense that Owensboro Health has consumers covered for every stage of life.

Innovative Navigation

Building off of the popularity and familiarly of mobile menus, known as hamburger menus, Owensboro Health’s site features the hamburger menu on the desktop site. When a site visitor clicks, he or she sees a new fly-out menu with the full navigation. Keeping the menu behind the three stacked lines helps declutter the homepage while still offering lots of navigation options. The site also offers task-based navigation, presented with icons, in the middle of the homepage.

Streamlined Content to Eye-Catching Calls to Action

The health system partnered with Geonetric to extend the clean, uncluttered look and feel to the site’s copy as well. New, benefit-driven web copy engages site visitors and provides an overview of the health system’s comprehensive services. In addition, the design and content complement each other perfectly on the call to action (CTA) panels. Featuring an action-oriented green that stands out against Owensboro Health’s blue, the CTA panels encourage site visitors to take the next step and engage with the health system.

A place for family and friends to search and view photos of newborns who make their debut at Parkview Medical Center.

Complement the Design

Through rotating photos and cute quotes, Parkview Medical Center’s online nursery shares baby information using a design that complements the main website. Like the rest of the site, the photo gallery is easily viewed on mobile devices as well as desktop computers.

Share Darling Photos

Large, professional photos are displayed for each newborn, and visitors can even print and save the photos. Family who share links to a baby’s photo also promote the Birth Center.

Provide Helpful Search

Visitors can view all babies in a list, or use the search and filter to find babies by their first name, mother’s name, father’s name, date of birth and gender.

Guided by the values of stewardship, compassion and hospitality, Avera aims to improve the lives of the nearly 1 million people it serves across the Upper Midwest. In support of that mission, the organization pursued a responsive redesign to make it easier for users—especially the growing share of mobile visitors—to learn about and access care online. The redesign also meant merging Avera’s mobile site with the main site, resulting in less maintenance for the organization.

Benefiting Users & Stakeholders

For Avera’s first site overhaul in five years, Geonetric interviewed client stakeholders, who wanted an intuitive, clean, modern look that could “wow” younger audiences and new families while promoting providers, services, and locations. Website users shared input, too. Eighty percent of those who took a survey rated their online experience as good or better, but some reported leaving the website with tasks unfinished. Their top tasks, according to survey results? Finding contact information, paying a bill, searching for jobs and looking for services offered. The redesigned site had to make it as simple as possible for users to quickly accomplish such goals.

Getting it Done

To that end, the new homepage features a prominent task navigation that lets users make just a single click to get to pages about billing, careers, and other commonly-sought topics. On interior pages, the task menu floats to the top in mobile view and to the side on desktop so it’s unobtrusive but still easy to access. Links can change, if needed, as Avera gets user feedback or sees a need for shortcuts to certain activities.

Outside the task navigation, card elements invite homepage visitors to find a doctor, location, or health plan. On many pages, SmartPanels—a feature of Geonetric’s VitalSite CMS—dynamically display providers, events, and locations related to content visitors are viewing. This means that no matter where users are on the site, they’re often just a click away from all the information they need to visit an Avera physician or facility. That comes in especially handy for an organization with 330 locations and more than 1,600 providers.

For pages with a unique call to action, attention-getting CTA panels in bold green remain high on the page even in mobile view. That lets users quickly take the next step to engage with Avera—whether it’s registering for a birth center tour, donating online, contacting the organization, or doing something else.

Engaging Baby Photo Gallery

Geonetric’s designers developed an eye-catching online nursery to help users accomplish another of their top tasks—viewing baby photos. Proud parents can announce their infant’s arrival, and visitors can quickly find their new little one by choosing a variety of helpful filters, including names, date of birth, gender, and hospital. The interactive gallery promotes Avera’s pregnancy and birth service line while keeping site visitors engaged.

For Tidelands Health, rebranding was more than a marketing initiative. It was a business imperative. From a single hospital with independent physicians focused on one county, the system had grown to serve a regional market with an outpatient focus. Tidelands Health needed to show consumers the breadth, depth, and continuity of its ever-growing network of care. One key to achieving that goal? A new website with fresh content that could increase local brand awareness and preference.

Learning from the Experts

To learn about the health system’s differentiators, specific services, and approach to care, Geonetric writers visited Tidelands Health and interviewed staff from top medical departments. Stakeholders from additional service lines shared information via online surveys. Geonetric helped identify areas of care that Tidelands Health physicians covered, but which the organization’s website didn’t thoroughly represent.

Patient-Friendly Copy

The agency highlighted all of the system’s service lines in 63 new pages that reflect Tidelands Health’s strengthened focus on wellness. Content directly addresses patients in understandable terms and explains the benefits of the organization’s expertise, technology, and recognitions. Scannable blocks of copy make it easier for users of any device to quickly find the details most important to them. Pages enhance SEO by focusing on single topics related to terms consumers search for.

Because all content was written with Tidelands Health’s full range of services in mind, pages crosslink to relevant copy about complementary care patients may need. That means users can easily explore all the services available to them through the region’s largest healthcare network.

All copy carries a conversational yet professional voice and tone that communicates as a caring doctor would to a patient: with confidence, warmth, clarity, and credibility.

Information at Users’ Fingertips

Throughout the new pages, intuitively placed links to Staywell health library articles make it simple for users to learn more about their condition or treatment—without leaving Tidelands Health’s site. The organization strengthens its reputation as a source of trusted health information while making use of its investment in thousands of high-quality, patient-geared medical content assets.

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.