Evaluating your web site

Margot Teleki, a special friend of Garden State Woman, has developed and marketed major brands in many diverse markets. She totally understands marketing and communications and is currently developing her new firm (Copywrite Marketing) to help organizations develop  high impact websites. Margot recently took on the task of analyzing hospital web sites since that is one of her current undustry focuses. Following are her conclusions. The skeleton of her analysis can be useful to all of us with a web site that we expect to drive  our business. Read on........

THE HOSPITAL WEB MYSTIQUE

94% of Hospital Web Sites Tend To Confuse Visitors In One Way or Another According to a Recent Study Of “Best” Hospitals

“All I wanted was to visit a friend and it took 20 minutes to find the phone number on the hospital web site,” complains Lynn L. of Morristown.
“Who’s the head of orthopedics in our local teaching hospital?” asks Sharon W. in Atlantic Highlands. ”I couldn’t find her on their web site.”
Elizabeth W. of Cherry Hill complains, “I had to contact the doctor at Johns Hopkins who performed two back surgeries on me three years ago. Web instructions were to type in the doctor’s name, so I did.“A few seconds later, the autoresponder came back. No results, yet I know he’s still there.
“Intrigued, I tried looking up another Johns Hopkins doctor who has been chair of his department for years. Again, the autoresponder responded, ‘No results.’”

Evidently the computer connect wasn’t functioning, but how would the average person know that? How would the hospital know it unless they had tested the system beforehand? Another common blooper: videos, webcasts or podcasts in which sight and sound are out of sync. Or not working, period.
To confirm what visitors claim, we asked a couple of doctors their thoughts regarding hospital web sites.

• One replied with no words and an amused grin, “No comment.”
• Another said, “It’s hard to find what I’m looking for when I need it.”
• A third commented cautiously that he finds "most hospital web sites confusing and irrelevant."