A hospital's website is a crucial touchpoint for patients, caregivers, and healthcare professionals. It needs to provide clear information, be easily navigable, and offer a seamless user experience. For Gaylord Specialty Healthcare, their website wasn't meeting these standards—until a comprehensive project focused on redesign and optimization brought remarkable improvements. This case study explores the specifics of how Gaylord Specialty Healthcare's website was transformed, providing valuable insights for marketers aiming to enhance their own digital platforms.
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As one of the largest providers of outpatient services, one of our main challenges was that this critical area was severely underrepresented on our website. The original navigation structure—Hospital, Outpatient, Physical Therapy—caused confusion for our users. It didn’t clearly reflect the overlap in services, such as physical therapy being available in the hospital, outpatient, and other service areas. This organization by service line left users lost when they were simply looking for solutions related to their specific symptoms, illness, or injury. For example, traumatic brain injury was listed under three different sections—Hospital, Outpatient, and Traurig House—making it difficult for users to find the information they needed.
Our new website is much more patient-centric, allowing us to immediately address visitors’ concerns. When someone searches for a condition like traumatic brain injury now, they’re directed to a consolidated page with all the relevant service lines, making navigation easier and more intuitive.
Nextiny's insights on streamlining the user experience were also crucial. Previously, users had to click between multiple pages to get all the information they needed, but with their guidance, we shifted to longer, single-page content to minimize the risk of losing users mid-navigation.
Another key issue we faced was the difficulty of locating admissions information. Together, we resolved this by creating a prominent tab that immediately guides users to the appropriate area for inpatient hospital admissions or outpatient service scheduling. This new, thoughtful navigation helps us better anticipate and meet the needs of our patients and their families.
Tara A. Knapp
VP, External Affairs
Gaylord Specialty Healthcare
Before starting the project, we needed to analyze and understand the issues faced by both users and the team. We reviewed the site with a fresh perspective, discussed the team's frustrations internally, and utilized all available site data.
The original site had a disorganized structure, containing over 800 pages with two levels of navigation that varied depending on the page you were on. This excessive number of pages and navigation options resulted in a convoluted and repetitive layout that was difficult to navigate and understand.
Furthermore, the site's SEO setup was poor, with significant issues in page titles, meta descriptions, and broken links. These problems severely impacted the site's search engine rankings, making it difficult for potential visitors to find the organization's services through online searches.
Additionally, the user experience (UX) on the site posed challenges for the users. With multiple navigation areas and service pages lacking sufficient context, visitors often struggled to quickly and easily find relevant information. This disjointed navigation led to a confusing and frustrating experience for users.
Lastly, the outdated design of the website did not reflect the organization's modern branding and services. An outdated aesthetic failed to convey their advancements and current offerings, potentially leading to a mismatch between their image and the impression given to visitors through the website.
One of the significant challenges encountered was the difficulty in editing. The complex backend architecture in Wordpress slowed updates, making quick changes cumbersome. Another issue was the lack of cohesion among the multiple teams working on the same site. This disjointed approach led to inconsistencies and delays. Without a unified workflow, inefficiencies arose.
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The site lacked a main call-to-action (CTA). Without a primary conversion path, efforts to generate leads and engage patients were hindered. The absence of a clear CTA meant missed opportunities to direct user actions towards desired outcomes.
To effectively address these issues, we developed and implemented a range of targeted strategies and solutions.
To address the messy site structure, the redesign included several key improvements:
First, a single main navigation bar was implemented to simplify the menu, significantly enhancing usability. This streamlined approach made it easier for users to find what they were looking for without feeling overwhelmed by too many options.
The redesign introduced dedicated sub-sites for specific sub-sections whose audiences varied greatly from the main site focus, such as community adaptive sports programming and donation areas. This facilitated a more structured layout and established specific zones for specialized content, navigation, and internal teams.
Lastly, the redesign involved consolidating similar pages into comprehensive, value-packed sections. By combining related content into unified sections, the site became more cohesive and easier to navigate, providing users with a richer and more informative experience. This focus on consolidation helped to eliminate redundancy and presented information in a more accessible and efficient manner, attributing to stronger SEO as well.
The redesign's SEO enhancements involved a comprehensive overhaul of both technical and content elements to significantly boost organic traffic, search engine rankings, and online visibility:
Migrating the website to the HubSpot Content HUB established a strong SEO foundation. The platform's infrastructure and pre-optimized themes facilitated advanced SEO strategies and continuous improvements. This integration enhanced search engine performance and simplified maintenance, ensuring long-term success in attracting and retaining visitors.
Proper SEO strategies were implemented to boost the website's performance and visibility. Each page received a unique, optimized title and meta description, significantly enhancing search engine visibility. This crucial step ensured that users could more easily discover the content when searching for relevant information.
Additionally, all internal and external links were thoroughly checked and any broken links were promptly fixed. By ensuring that all links were functional, the bounce rates were significantly reduced, which in turn improved the overall user experience.
Technical SEO was another critical area addressed. Various backend issues, such as page load times and sitemaps, were analyzed and optimized. By addressing these technical aspects, the website's overall performance was enhanced, resulting in a faster, more efficient user experience and better rankings on search engine results pages.
User experience was a major focus, with several significant changes implemented to enhance the overall site.
First, engaging visuals and streamlined text played a crucial role in the updated design. This redesign made the site not only more visually appealing but also easier to read.
Second, a clear main conversion path was established through the implementation of a prominent call to action—request an appointment. This feature was designed to guide users seamlessly toward making contact, thereby increasing the likelihood of conversions and ensuring that visitors could easily take the next step in their customer journey.
Lastly, the new HubSpot site facilitated easy front-end editing. This upgrade allowed for simple edits, significantly reducing the workload for the team, and enabled the team to manage and update the site more effectively without extensive technical expertise.
The enhancements brought several measurable benefits, showcasing the team's hard work and dedication from start to finish.
15.9% Increase time on page per session
First, there was a noticeable increase in the time visitors spent on the page. This longer time on the site indicated higher engagement levels, as users found the content more compelling and worth exploring in greater depth.
7.42% Increase events per session
There was a substantial rise in conversion rates. The primary Call-to-Action (CTA) was more effective in converting visitors into patients or leads. This boost in conversions reflects that the site was not only attracting more visitors but also successfully driving them to take the desired actions, thereby achieving its primary objectives.
The SEO enhancements led to significantly improved search rankings.
10% Increase Organic traffic
14% Increase Total Visits
As a result, the site appeared higher in search results, which drove a substantial increase in organic traffic. This visibility boost meant more potential customers were discovering the site through search engines, ultimately expanding the reach and impact of the business.
Additionally, the improvements brought about more accurate analytics. By ensuring clean data continuity from HubSpot, the ability to track performance metrics became much more reliable. This allowed for better-informed decisions based on precise and dependable data, optimizing marketing strategies and overall performance analysis.
For the site management team, the simplified updates feature enabled front-end editing, significantly streamlining the process of keeping content up-to-date. This streamlined process reduced the time and effort required for updates, ensuring that the site always presented the latest information and maintained its relevance.
In addition, the new platform helped unify efforts across different teams. With a streamlined design and a clear division of responsibilities, the potential for inter-team friction was minimized. This improved coordination and collaboration, allowing teams to work more efficiently and effectively towards common goals.