Hancock Health: Unifying 13 Websites into One Seamless Experience
How We Drove 174% Increase in Average Time on Site
UX Benchmarking Research, IA Strategy, UX/UI
Hancock Health is a regional independent health network serving the growing East Central Indiana suburbs of Indianapolis—and was a longstanding client of Well Done.
While Hancock Health has grown to become a modern, sophisticated health network, their online presence was disconnected and difficult to navigate. This affected their ability to find new patients, serve existing ones, and present their brand in a clear, cohesive way.
We saw an opportunity to unify Hancock Health’s online brand and help them achieve their business goals by combining all 13 of their websites into one, providing an efficient, intuitive, welcoming experience for all. So that’s what we did.
The redesigned Hancock Health website quickly demonstrated progress toward our goals by connecting users with the content they were seeking faster.
51% decrease in bounce rate
Compared to the previous version of the Hancock Health website, we saw a 51.66% decrease in the overall bounce rate. The bounce rate of the new website is 36.9%, considerably lower than the healthcare industry average of 59.97%.
174% Increase in average time on site
Hancock Health’s old website had an average time on site of 0:49. The current average time on site is now 3:42—which is not only an increase of 174%, but is also significantly higher than the industry average of 2–3 minutes.
58% increase in average pages viewed
People who came to the new site had a substantial increase in how many pages they looked at—up 58% compared to the old site.
Client Goals
Find and attract new patients
Retain existing patients
Compete with “big
city” healthcare
systems
Solution
To help Hancock Health achieve their business goals, we recommended a new website with a more streamlined, patient-focused experience. That meant consolidating 13 different websites (and more than 3,000 pages) into a single site for the entire health network—one that was far more practical for patients to navigate based on clear user paths that matched their expectations.
We also made sure the new site’s content was visually and tonally consistent with actually visiting a Hancock Health facility. This made the entire brand stronger and better aligned, as we matched the real-life experience—including common visual identifiers you might see out in the community—to what people experience on the website. Ultimately, the most rewarding thing we did was connect people throughout East Central Indiana with the doctors, information, and other healthcare resources they need to live their healthiest lives.
RESEARCH
A deep dive into both industry and market research helped us understand what people really want out of a regional healthcare network like Hancock Health. We discovered the most important things are access to physicians, proximity to healthcare facilities, convenience, and insurance coverage. Our research involved benchmarking against competitors—including top hospitals—to help determine which website improvements would have the biggest impact. And it included taking a close look at existing user data about Hancock Health’s various websites to identify and understand patterns that helped inform our work.
Strategy
We used our research findings to make detailed audience personas helping us predict how people search for healthcare information (both online and otherwise) and make decisions about care. We took into account not only the experience of current Hancock Health patients, but also prospective patients who might be exploring their healthcare options—or simply wanting reliable information about health conditions. In addition, we created customer journey maps documenting every online and real-life patient touchpoint throughout the healthcare network and greater community. These journey maps gave us a better understanding of a person’s emotional state as they experience what Hancock Health has to offer. This knowledge directly informed our website strategy, which focused on enhancing clarity and functionality while satisfying the needs of different kinds of visitors (i.e., patients, prospective patients, healthcare information seekers, etc.).
User Experience
Web design for Hancock Health’s new site was all about streamlining UX/UI by providing clear choices to help people find the information they need, quickly. That included welcoming, concise, easy-to-understand copy throughout the design, complemented by familiar visuals that reinforce the Hancock brand. And because so many people are accessing healthcare websites and apps on their phones, we knew the site needed to perform seamlessly regardless of screen size—so we optimized everything for mobile.
Web Development
In addition to consolidating 13 websites into one and developing everything to be fully responsive on desktop/mobile, we did other key development work. We created a robust search function for the site, and also several post types that cover things like doctors, locations, available services, events, and more. Additional development work included custom filtering, a custom block approach for user-friendly back-end page creation—and we made sure everything was hosted and managed on a HIPAA-compliant server. Finally, we implemented a custom tracking function that measures user interactions on the site without tracking personal health information.
