8 Mandatory Steps in Building Effective Web Solutions for Medical Centers

You will receive a web solution that will solve the tasks of YOUR healthcare business. Developing user-oriented web solutions are especially important for medical institutions – now people are increasingly looking for doctors, clinics, medical services on the Internet and the web solutions should be targeted specifically for them, potential patients. Therefore, as examples in this report, we consider medical web solutions.

At the Core – a Systematic Approach

Most people have a stereotype that digital marketing is only a complex of works to stimulate a company’s sales on the Internet. Yes, this approach was relevant in the late 90s and early 2000s.

Digital marketing is now a complex work on interaction with the target audience. When we receive feedback on our services and products, we provide additional services (make an appointment to see a doctor, useful subject list), inform about services and products, convey their value and uniqueness.

Digital marketing includes various tools: website, groups in social networks, contextual advertising, content marketing, video advertising, and training videos and much more.

All of these tools are closely interrelated with each other and collectively achieve business goals. That is, the effectiveness of contextual advertising on Google or targeted advertising on social networking platforms will directly depend on your web solution. If your web solutions are not thought out, then even the highest quality advertising campaign will not bring new patients and vice versa.

Therefore, when developing a web solution, you need to think about how it will be promoted and advertised in the search engines, how it will interact with company accounts on social networks, whether online recording services and consultations will be posted on it. In other words, when developing web solutions, you need to think through not only the behavior of users on it, but also from what sources and with what tasks they will come to web solutions.

Stages of Web Solutions Development

Most of the Digital Agencies begin to develop web solutions with design, bypassing the many stages of design. In order for the web solutions to be effective and to solve business problems, it is necessary to consistently go through all the steps presented. Let us analyze each of the eight stages of creating web solutions from the position of “Why is this business?”.

1. Setting Goals and Objectives

We must clearly understand why the medical center goes to the Internet space, what is its uniqueness, what is better or worse than its competitors. It would seem that these are standard marketing questions, but in most cases, when customers come to us, they cannot answer them. Answers to these questions will give us an understanding of the goals and objectives of the business from going online.

There may be several goals; examples of the goals of a medical center in digital marketing are presented on the slide. It is clear that these goals should be set with certain performance criteria. KPI of each goal must be assessed realistically, focusing on the market share of the medical center, the current demand for services, and so on.

If you have prescribed the goals of developing web solutions and put real KPIs for them, then the agency developing web solutions will strive to achieve the desired result, and you will be able to evaluate their work.

2. Determination of the Target Audience, Drafting Characters

Many people talk about the importance of determining the target audience but, in fact, we hear from our customers the following: “Our target audience is men and women aged 18 to 65 years.” That is, they are actually residents of the city. It is very expensive to work with such a target audience, in order to cover it, for example, with contextual advertising, a considerable budget is required.

Therefore, we narrow the definition of the target audience to the following: the target audience is the people who are most likely to buy your product or service.

To describe the target audience, we use the character composing method.

Characters are typical representatives of the target audience. These are not real people, but they are created on the basis of the behavior and motivation of real people. They allow us to understand the actions of patients in specific situations, their motivation, behavior on the Internet and on web solutions, in particular.

Characters are created on the basis of interviews with employees of the company (marketers, management, administrators), experts in the field of medicine and the patients themselves. Usually, the company has several target groups and, accordingly, characters. Characters include a description of the actions that the user performs, as well as the reasons for these actions.

Characters are a story!

• What does the user want to do?
• Why does he do it?
• What are his expectations?

Characters help to understand:

• How to make decisions.
• What factors affect them.
• Motivate users.

Composing characters helps to understand how people are looking for services and products, what information they need to make a decision, will give an understanding of user motivation. Only in this way can we make an attractive offer to the user that will solve his need.

3. Semantic Core of the Site

After we have determined for whom the web solutions will be developed, it is necessary to understand how users search for the company’s products and services on the Internet. After all, users are not always looking for service by its name, often they want to begin to sort out the problem themselves, read reviews about the doctor, clinic, etc.

Semantic core for the web solutions – a list of words and phrases describing the direction and theme of the web solutions. A well-developed semantic core of a medical center web solutions can be from 50 to 100 thousand search queries.

All this information that users are looking for must be placed on the web solutions, so we will make our web solutions oriented to potential customers.

The development of the semantic core of the web solutions will allow several times to reduce the cost of its further search engine promotion and contextual advertising, as well as the content of the web solutions are developed on its basis.

4. Site Structure

One of the important stages in the development of web solutions is the design of its structure. The structure of the web solution is a hierarchical tree of all its sections and pages, it is compiled on the basis of the character behavior scripts created earlier.

The structure of the web solutions allows you to distribute across sections and pages of the entire huge array of information that we plan to place on the web solutions. This is the basis of web solutions navigation; it allows you to make the site user-friendly.

The “3 clicks” rule works here – it is desirable that the user can get to each page of the site in 2 or 3 clicks. The structure of the web solutions will help us to make sure of this.

After the structure is composed, it is necessary for each page or section to distribute the search queries received during the compilation of the semantic core. So we will understand not only where the page will be placed on the site, but also what information will be presented on it.

Only by making the structure of the web solutions, we can make the site user-friendly, any information on it can be found in a few clicks.

5. Web Solutions Content

This is the most important and most expensive stage of web solution development. You need to understand that the site is only a wrapper for presenting information that we want to convey to our customers. Users come to the site for content, not for design.

Site content includes:

• Texts.
• Infographic.
• A photo.
• Video.

Content should be developed on the basis of the site structure and its semantic core.

If the content is developed before the design stage, it will be decorated by designers and will be better perceived by users, they will receive the information that they need.

And its development for search queries will allow getting a website optimized for search engines already at the launch stage, that is, save on website promotion in the future.

6. Site Prototypes

The prototype is a schematic display of the site page. Most often, the prototype includes the basic structure and navigation scheme between the pages of the site, as well as its main components (such as forms and ad units).

Prototypes are developed for all pages on which there is a functional: main, contacts, application form, question-answer, section “Specialists”, etc.

Development of prototypes will make the site convenient and intuitive for patients, eliminate navigation errors at the design stage of the web solutions, rather than after delivery, and save time to correct them.

As a result of the development of prototypes, the web solutions will be simple and understandable to the user, he can find the necessary information in a couple of clicks, and accordingly, quickly make a decision and perform the targeted action. The effectiveness of such a web solution will be significantly higher compared to a site for which prototypes have not been developed.

7. Design

By the beginning of the web solutions design development, there is its structure, ready-made content, and prototypes, therefore this stage of development becomes purely technical.

Thanks to the development of characters at the design stage, we understand for whom the design should be developed and usually, there are no difficulties with the agreement. After all, the design of the web solutions should not like the director of the medical center, first of all, it should be attractive to its target audience.

Qualitatively designed design, which is focused on the target audience of the company, will make the site attractive, and therefore more effective.

8. Layout and Programming

Technical stage. What needs to be noted here is that the programming and layout of the site should be executed with high quality; when choosing a software platform, it is necessary to provide for the possibility of further web solutions development. We use MVC, Ruby on Rails, Site Core, Drupal, and Joomla. In most cases, web solutions are developed for 3-5 years, so most likely in the future will need to be finalized, and it is very important that this can be done at a low cost.

The Web Solution Is Ready

What do we get the result after developing the web Solution according to the approach described above?

• The web solution meets the needs of patients. The site contains enough information to perform the patient’s target action: to make an appointment, to select the right specialist, to choose a medical center, etc. Accordingly, the conversion of such a web solution will be higher.
• The structure of the web solution is simple and understandable for patients: they can easily find the information they need in a couple of clicks.
• The texts on the site are well decorated, the patient receives the information that he needs.
• The site quickly goes to the top for key search queries.
• Advertising campaign development takes much less time and is cheaper: a list of search queries (semantic core) is already ready.
• Due to the development of prototypes, we develop the web solution faster, correct all errors in the course of work.

Congratulations! We made a web solution for your medical center that solves business problems.