The Primary Health Network’s Medical Website Redesign Case Study

Posted on August 28, 2023 in Case Studies

More patients connect with healthcare providers online than ever before. The remarkable increase in telehealth, digital records access and the sheer volume of provider options has made healthcare websites a crucial first point of contact. Organizations like The Primary Health Network have invested in substantial website redesign projects to provide a better patient experience and improve backend content management.

A Website Check-up

The Primary Health Network first took the pulse of its website in mid-2021. The multilocation healthcare provider coordinates family care services across 17 centers. Providers offer everything from behavioral health to podiatry to dental care.

Their website serves several important functions, including:

Online billing and payment support
Patient portal access
Location-specific service and contact information
Provider information

While the site’s design and structure worked, the team recognized it was time for an update. Oneupweb’s experience in healthcare marketing and industry-specific projects quickly established us as the go-to pick to get Primary Health Network’s digital presence up to speed.

Why Now?

The pandemic accelerated an established shift toward digital-first care and patient management. Until March 2020, only certain licensed providers could offer digital services like telehealth consultations. The pandemic effectively revived the doctor “house calls” of a bygone era. The CARES Act broke down several important barriers to telemedicine by establishing important new standards, including:

Any type of physician can bill for Medicare services delivered online
Patients no longer need to have previously visited a clinician in-person before a telehealth appointment
Telehealth can be provided to patients in their homes
Physicians can provide telehealth services from home
Expanding platforms
Telehealth can be provided across state lines (some state regulations may restrict this access)

These changes facilitated an incredible (and often necessary) shift to telehealth. In 2019, telehealth visits accounted for 0.1% of all patient interactions; by the end of 2021, its share ballooned to 5%.

The Prognosis

Armed with real-world data and clear demand from patients, The Primary Health Network identified the issues holding back its existing site.

An updated design. A core component of any healthcare website is establishing trust. Primary Health Network and Oneupweb identified the need to modernize the site’s look and feel to improve patient trust and brand authority.

Ease of use. Medical websites provide important updates to patients about seasonal vaccines, location-specific events or changes in services. The existing website made these sorts of updates difficult to publish and even harder for users to find.

Integration. The Primary Health Network also needed to integrate its foundation’s website into the primary domain, requiring structural changes to the existing site and a content consolidation to preserve its messaging and SEO value.

The Plan of Care

After a very productive kick-off call, Oneupweb rallied a team of web designers and developers and got to work. Senior Graphic Designer Nic Gravenhiser quickly prioritized a mix of professionalism with “softness.” Interacting with a medical provider online can be intimidating, especially for those with little digital experience. Before clicking open a design tool, we set about “mapping” our care plan with a sitemap.

Oneupweb is known for its data-driven approach to website design, but this project took our attention to detail to a new level. We invested substantial time researching and evaluating user behavior while accounting for on-site variables that may have negatively or positively impacted results.

Were certain conversions (phone call clicks, telehealth appointments, etc.) more common because of user intent or website design?
Were low-volume pages genuinely low-priority or simply too difficult to access?
There were hundreds of site searches for zip codes on the old website. Was it difficult for people to find the location they were looking for?

After answering these questions (and dozens more!), we nailed down a sitemap, snapped on our rubber gloves (metaphorically speaking), and hit the operating theater.

The Results

Our design, development and SEO teams put together one heckuva website. The new design embraced The Primary Health Network’s brand standards while introducing a clean, accessible site that is infinitely easier to manage. We also retained and improved the SEO value associated with The Primary Health Network Foundation’s site, resolving one of their team’s chief concerns.

Comparing the new site’s first full quarter (Q1 2023) with the same period YoY, the changes certainly paid off.

Total site sessions increased by 13.14%
Direct sessions (one indication of return users) increased by 25.96%

More importantly, site engagement improved substantially.

Bounce rate improved 20.83% across all channels to 52.12%
Organic bounce rate improved to 49.30%
Average session duration improved by 6.24%

These improvements show that the site design was more engaging and, in short, more intuitive for users looking to access information or features quickly.

Flexing All of Our Healthcare Marketing Muscles

One of the most exciting elements of this healthcare marketing website case study is what happened after it was done: we put it to work. Healthcare recruiting has always been a challenge for providers. Still, with thousands of healthcare professionals leaving the workforce and a strong labor market, it’s affecting the ability of organizations like The Primary Health Network to meet demand. We leveraged the new site in a successful healthcare recruiting campaign on the heels of this project; see how it went.

Get the Digital Care Your Brand Deserves

Working with organizations like The Primary Health Network presents exciting opportunities to combine the latest marketing trends with an industry that is increasingly reliant on digital assets and messaging. Trust your medical website redesign to a fully integrated team with deep medical marketing experience. Get in touch or call (231) 922-9977 today to get started.