The internet is no more a mere source of information or a gateway to social media networks. Its role has become much more complex. Now it can be perceived as a crowdfunding hub and a cradle for international projects and business. Hence, players willing to deepen their footprint in the marketplace go online. The healthcare sector does not lag behind, and many organizations and institutions like hospitals have already launched their websites.
Here, at EffectiveSoft, we assist hospitals in attracting customers via websites by offering them information on a particular doctor or diseases and medical conditions they are able to treat. We have extensive experience in Medical websites CMS and understanding of problems healthcare organizations come across.
Each hospital has its own needs and requirements, but still they are very similar to those other healthcare organizations have, and that is why there are a number of common issues healthcare websites usually face.
Information Overload
Hospitals, as a rule, have many specialization areas from diagnostics to surgery and consulting services. Development of websites for hospitals requires high expertise and domain experience in order to escape information overload and excess complexity.
Multilingual Websites
Many hospitals are opting for patients from different countries and go international by launching multinational versions of their websites, and that creates additional difficulties to users.
Website Structure and Navigation
A well-planned structure is crucial for such websites since usually visitors have little knowledge of the medical terminology. The websites contain information on doctors and their specializations, procedures, diseases and conditions, departments and divisions, and more. If this data is not well-structured, patients will have to spend much time trying to find the information they need. And if website navigation is not easy, they may never find what they are looking for.
This all creates specific requirements for healthcare websites. Usage of standard CMS is not a solution for such websites as such systems tend not to answer needs of healthcare organizations to the full extent.
To eliminate these problems, a customized CMS must be developed or an existing one must be customized since not all open source CMS can meet requirements of healthcare players.
EffectiveSoft suggests customizing of CMS, including customization of CMS like WordPress and Drupal. Such an approach enables us to create web solutions for hospitals that can boast high flexibility and functionality. We extend functionality of CMS by out-of-the-box plugins. As a result, our customers obtain native support from CMS (e.g. WordPress). They are sure in a high safety level of the solution and can upload content to their websites using a familiar interface.
We pay much attention to customers’ requirements while working on a web solution. We analyze users’ behavior and create a website structure and website navigation that can encourage visitors to send a request to owners of a website as soon as possible.
EffectiveSoft develops scalable solutions, thus giving its customers an opportunity to modify their website by launching new business areas or focusing on underdeveloped ones and bring corresponding changes to contents of a website.
We recommend our customers from the healthcare domain to split one website on several new websites with single navigation. This approach enables visitors to get access to information they need without being distracted.
In the meantime, such websites work as a single a single data portal, thus offering a complete picture of specializations a hospital has.
About the Author
Tatsiana Levdikova is a websites design and development expert at EffectiveSoft, a custom software development company that unites more than 250+ experienced specialists: software developers, engineers, and scientists having expertise in different technical domains. If you have any questions, you can reach the author at: Tatsiana.Levdikova@effective-soft.com.