The Austin Diagnostic Clinic
Website Redesign for a Multi-Specialty Clinic
Expertise
Iterative Development, UX Design, UX Research
Client
The Austin Diagnostic Clinic
Timeline
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Challenge
The Austin Diagnostic Clinic’s doctors and providers serve thousands of patients in and around the greater Austin area.
ADC wanted to attract more patients in an increasingly competitive medical industry. While ADC had hundreds of established patients, it was becoming increasingly more difficult for the clinic to distinguish itself.
Austin’s population was rapidly growing, and according to market research, fewer newcomers were hearing about ADC, and when they did, residents confused ADC with other local clinics.
How might we attract new patients while retaining existing ones?
Scope
We worked with ADC for eight years, over which time we launched two full redesigns as well an multiple features and enhancements.
Constraints
Each project faced budget constraints and timeline needs, depending on the needs of our client, the marketing director.
Implementation
this project began internally, with the founder of our company, and continued as a Standard Beagle project when the founder became full-time with Standard Beagle.
Our Goal
ADC had a number of objectives they wanted to accomplish.
Retain and increase market share
Austin’s population had doubled, and the number of competing providers had also increased. ADC wanted to make sure it not only retained its current patient population, but also increased the number of patients and appointments.
Improve patient access to clinic information, reduce inbound calls
ADC’s business staff was handling hundreds of calls each day from patients, reducing productivity. The clinic wanted to reduce the number of calls by improving online access to basic information, such as locations, clinic hours, care instructions and forms.
Drive more traffic to the website
Traffic to ADC’s existing website in 2011 averaged 55,000 visitors per month. By increasing web traffic, the clinic could capture more patients and consolidate messaging.
Our Solution
ADC had a complex website without a focused target audience. As a result, the website was at a disadvantage when appealing to the clinic’s primary target market — new patients.
We recommended researching patient needs and taking the ADC website through a systematic process to redesign the user experience.
Results
Results were stunning in the first two years after the website launch. Website traffic steadily increased and online visibility helped to drive new appointments.
61% increase in web traffic
In 2013, ADC averaged 90,000 visitors per month, an increase of more than 60% since 2011.
New and established patient appointment requests
ADC was able to capture patients who might not have wanted to call during the day for an appointment. Appointment requests completed online had a .71% conversion rate.
Standard Beagle became the go-to web design and development firm for ADC until 2019.
Our Process
Understand
Based on feedback from emails and phone calls to the marketing department, new site visitors reported they had trouble locating information because of the way it was organized.
Anecdotal evidence indicated that visitors were frustrated when they visited the website, which affected their feelings for the clinic itself.
Heuristic Evaluation
There were 750 pages of content on an existing domain with established domain authority. Over time, the content had become disorganized and hard for some users to locate quickly.
Content Inventory and Analysis
We continued the process with a content inventory and analysis. Each piece of content was cataloged and analyzed for its contribution to the site.
Through a collaborative process, ADC decided which content should be kept or removed. Content was flagged if it needed to be reorganized. A content strategy was developed to help guide future content creation and how it should be organized.
Competitive Analysis
At the same time, a competitive analysis was executed. What were the other sites doing that was effective, and what could be improved upon? The competitive analysis uncovered key website elements for users and helped guide the overall digital strategy.
The marketing team was asked to answer a series of questions about each of the competitor’s websites. In addition, actual patients visited the clinic and tested the clinic’s website as well as their competitors’ websites. Users were asked to complete a series of tasks. Their interactions were analyzed to understand where they had trouble and why.
User Testing
We sought user feedback at each stage in the process from patients, staff and stakeholders. In this stage, we conducted user testing on competitors websites to understand what worked and what did not.
Explore
With data in from our discovery and research, we analyzed and synthesized the results.
The decision was made to implement a new digital strategy:
- Redesign website
- Establish social media presence and drive traffic to website
User Personas
We identified and prioritized the clinic’s target audiences. We identified more than five user types on the site. These included:
- New patients
- Existing patients
- Doctors
- Staff
- Prospective employees
Ultimately, the clinic decided to focus on new patients: women, aged 25-64.
Card Sort
Over several days, stakeholders were invited to sort content to understand how real users think about content organization. The results of the activities were used to design the new site’s information architecture, visual appearance, navigational structure and backend site management.
Design
Site Map
We designed several iterations of the site structure. With 750 pages of content, it was important to ensure that patients would funnel into the section they needed. The site would have three key sections:
- Doctors
- Medical Services
- Locations
Navigation Design
Additionally, we designed the primary, secondary, tertiary and additional menus. We designed unique navigation for the main sections of the site.
User Testing
During this design process, we gathered feedback from external users in both informal and formal testing sessions.
Key Takeaways
Patients varied in how they would access care.
Some patients started with location. Others started with the type of service they needed.
Patients didn’t read
Complex navigation hindered patients.
Wireframes
Based on these findings, we designed the site layouts. We designed primary sections of the site, focusing on the major flows.
Create
Front-End Development
The existing site was built using Front Page, and it’s main drawback was that information had to be maintained in multiple areas, instead of from one place.
We chose to move the site to WordPress. Using a content management system would allow us to tie together information from a single source. For example, a doctor’s information could display in multiple areas of the site, and when information for the doctor changed, such as a phone number, this could be done in one place and populate throughout the site.
Content Import and Creation
Transferring content was another major hurdle in the site’s initial development. Each page had been inventoried, but it also had to be moved to the new CMS.
We tracked each URL in order to set up redirects after the site’s launch.
Validate
User Feedback
Following the site launch, we tracked feedback from both patients and staff. Staff members complained that they could not find information. They had memorized pathways and the pathways no longer existed. Once they learned the new path, they no longer complained.
Feedback from our primary user group was surprisingly positive. These users raved over the new design and there were few complaints about not being able to find and make appointments.
Additional Features and Enhancements
We continued to test and measure feedback following the launch. The following year, adjustments were made to the site’s framework and design to make it more mobile-friendly. We also added new features — including a new doctor filter and search.
The marketing department was also given clearance to add a request appointment form to the website. Since this was a new initiative, we worked with the clinic’s business office to map out how appointment requests would be handled once they came through the website. We tracked the form’s performance through goal tracking in Google Analytics.
Later, we updated the branding the colors, added a language chooser for 10 languages, updated the home page design, as well as other improvements.