“When we began our search for a partner to help us construct a new website, we were looking for one with industry experience who would continue to add value beyond the launch of the site. When we selected Geonetric, and began working together, we had several large projects in progress. With aggressive plans, and a small team, we took advantage of more of Geonetric’s resources than we had originally planned, including copywriting and digital marketing support. With some customization, we were able to develop a site that allows us to connect prospective patients with the care they need – right from the homepage. And best of all, we are giving our mobile visitors, which now outnumber our desktop visitors, the online experience they deserve.”
Susen Rasmussen, Director of Strategic Communications
ProHealth Care
When ProHealth Care decided it was time to move to a different CMS and redesign their website, they turned to a former partner and former platform. The Waukesha, WI-based health system and Geonetric worked together in the past, but amicably parted ways when the ProHealth Care team decided to bring web ownership in-house and partner with a local company. While that worked for a while, ProHealth needed a thought leader and partner well versed in the healthcare industry to help bring its vision for ProHealthCare.org to the next level and enhance the user experience.
Moving back to a healthcare-specific content management system
ProHealth Care wanted to create a new site that offered more transactional and interactive elements, offered a mobile-first format, as well as improved accessibility. Returning to the VitalSite CMS achieved all of those goals for the system.
The new site, which launched in September 2019, features improved navigation and a dynamic homepage focused on access to care. The site offers integration with Epic and Experity Health’s online reservation system, and allows consumers to schedule provider appointments, check wait times and make urgent care reservations, and schedule virtual urgent care visits.
Being built on a healthcare-specific CMS means the ProHealth Care site automatically comes with powerful provider, location, service, and class and event directories. ProHealth Care built on the out-of-the-box functionality, developing custom provider profiles that feature engaging photos, videos, and outline the providers’ philosophy of care, locations, medical education, and may include an Epic widget for appointment scheduling. The provider directory easily allows ProHealth Care to note which providers are accepting new patients as well as list accepted insurance, two elements that aid site visitors in selecting a new provider.
The new site also takes a mobile-first approach, with every page accessible for mobile users instead of a limited amount. Since the site is responsive, it provides an optimal experience for all users, regardless of device being used.
The ProHealth Care team also appreciates having development and stage sites back again, allowing them to test changes and enhancements before pushing updates to the live site.
Leveraging deep healthcare writing expertise
As part of the project, the ProHealth Care team partnered with Geonetric’s expert content strategists and writers to refresh the site’s content and optimize it for organic search. The new content reflects the community-based health care system’s brand and values – it’s approachable, readable, and focused on patients and family benefits.
The team began by developing a full content matrix, a page-by-page blueprint for the site. Geonetric’s skilled content writers developed 229 pages of new content, including pages for 37 services, some of which previously had no presence on the site. Service line sections are thoughtfully organized to follow a typical patient journey, so it’s easy for site visitors to find the information that meets their needs.
The content team also wrote content for dozens of support pages, such as “Ways to give” and “Patients and families.” The team also wrote page titles and meta descriptions for each page following best practices for search engine optimization.
To help meet ProHealth Care’s goal of streamlining site content, the Geonetric team reduced the number of pages by nearly 50%, making it easier for visitors to find the information they are looking for with fewer clicks.
The content team also integrated ProHealth Care’s popular “ProHealth Minute” videos on relevant pages throughout the site.
As copy was completed and approved for sections of the site, the ProHealth Care team was instrumental in taking it and building conversion-focused pages with thoughtfully placed calls-to-action, making the site come to life.
Meeting compliance guidelines and enjoying impressive results
At launch, ProHealth Care’s new site was WCAG 2.0 compliant, providing an optimal user experience to site visitors of all abilities. Geonetric’s expertise in this area was highly valued by the ProHealth Care team during its partner selection process as it lacks a dedicated digital team – or even a team member.
The ProHealth Care team is excited about the site’s performance. In the first few months post-launch overall traffic is more engaged, with site visitors spending 29% more time on site year-over-year and mobile users averaging 38% more time on site year-over-year. In addition, overall page views are up 11%, with average pages per session up 24% and bounce rates down 41% year-over-year, with site visitors staying longer and becoming more engaged with their content.
With searchers relying more on location-based queries, such as “urgent care near me”, ProHealth Care’s location pages have seen a 12% increase in page views and a 7% increase in entrances, correlating with the organization’s shift in content strategy to break out urgent care and emergency department locations as separate location profiles from their parent organizations. This illustrates that more people are going to these pages from within the ProHealth Care site and landing directly on these pages, which means they’re aligning better with location-based user intent.
Organic search traffic to the site is up 19% year-over-year, showing the positive effect of investments in a more robust SEO strategy.
Investing in digital after launch
With an engaging new site to drive traffic to, the ProHealth Care team also partnered with Geonetric for ongoing digital marketing support. The initial focus was on building out service line Schema.org and performing keyword research around site search. Another important aspect of the work was focused on business listings. The Geonetric team partnered with ProHealth Care to clean up existing listings and build other standard listings across multiple platforms from scratch. They also helped manage the process of adding photos, added UTM parameters for tracking, and perform monthly updates.
ProHealth Care also invested in several pay-per-click campaigns, enlisting Geonetric’s digital experts to update digital ads and optimize their investment by introducing some new keyword strategies. The team updated copy, reworked ads to be more conversion-focused, and revised keywords for campaigns including virtual care, urgent care, and find a doctor.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic forced the team to pause some campaigns and reallocate resources, ProHealth Care is still seeing impressive results from its investments. Since the first upload into Google My Business for ProHealth Care, they have had over 100,000 actions on ads, including clicking on phone numbers. Google My Business and Bing have sent more than 20,000 visitors to their site and those users are on the site for 2:02 minutes and visit 2.68 pages per session – both statistics higher than industry averages.
New CMS Platform, Responsive Design, and Content Set the Stage for Engaging Online Experience
