Learn the basics of starting a homepage
Learn the basics of starting a homepage
Establishing an on-line presence: Part one of two
As the Internet becomes more widespread, industries outside retail (health care perhaps most prominently) have come to see the benefits of using the Internet as a means of reaching — and finding — new audiences.
Yet with new technology and new marketing strategies, finding the best way to do this is not always easy. Establishing a homepage is definitely step No. 1, but as with anything, there are rules to the game and clear strategies for success. (See box, below right.)
A-B-C, easy as 1, 2, 3
"Content is king," says Tom Burke, director of marketing communications for net.Genesis, a Cambridge, MA-based Internet technology sales and consulting firm. "It’s what keeps people coming back to the site. You want to give them good information in an easy-to-glean fashion."
Perhaps nothing is more basic — or sacred — to the establishment of a successful Web site/homepage. (See glossary, p. 69.) The type of information your agency wants to present, along with the intended audience, must be kept foremost in the design of a homepage. For example, he says, you may have two very distinct audiences for orthopedic information: the elderly population with chronic complaints and younger people suffering from acute problems.
"At its most basic," Burke explains, "the homepage’s primary use is communication. So your understanding of your audience and how to communicate with them using the proper language is critical. How can you be as direct and concise as possible with your content?"
Another key issue at play is that of navigation; once someone has entered your site can he or she easily move around from page to page and find information. Burke says that anyone considering developing a Web site that primarily is to be an information source should consider including a search engine. This would allow a visitor interested in diabetes, for example, to enter a key word or phrase such as "diabetes" or "glucose monitoring" and be directed to articles or related links on the subject.
The ability to move forward and backward is also key to keeping visitors coming back for more — nothing is more frustrating than finding yourself at a dead end with no way to get back to a page you saw earlier.
If the information itself is king, then the visual design is certainly queen. It’s best in setting up a Web page to remember the axiom: Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Today’s on-line technology allows for streaming video (what’s often seen in banners across the top of a page), dancing icons, and blinking rotating buttons. But just because they’re out there, doesn’t mean you should use them, and certainly not all at once.
Watch out for whizzy features’
"Certainly there’s a place for the whizzy features," Burke points out, "but you want to use them judiciously and appropriately. You have to consider, too, that because of the necessary bandwidths and the speed on transmission, that not all home [computer] lines will be able to dial them up. Still, it’s important to give the visitor, where appropriate, something to visualize like a brief visual on changing a dressing accompanied by some text and maybe some audio."
Providing links to other health care sites is also a good idea, he says. "If, in fact, you have a good relationship with an HMO or hospital or physicians’ group, then in many cases, you may want to consider using them as a means of referral to your site or as a link on your site.
"Further, if it’s something like a local pharmacy, it may be willing to sponsor pharmaceutical areas of your site and you could link to their site. I really don’t see any reason why a home health provider couldn’t sell advertising or sponsorships on their page because currently there aren’t any regulations as to what goes on the Internet," he concludes. Burke adds the decision to advertise is really one that can only be made based on the philosophies of the agency.
Larry Leahy, MHA, CHCE, director of program integrity for Beaumont Home Health Service in Victoria, TX, advises cautious consideration of advertising. His agency has had a Web site for about three years, and as he views it, selling ad space can be risky business. "It’s still out there as a possibility, but we have some concerns because it puts another burden on you as far as who the vendors are going to be and who will decide. It gets down to what your purpose is — is it advertising or information?"
If you’ve decided to enter the realm of the Internet, the next step, after determining what you want your site to do, is deciding who will set it up. Go into any local computer superstore, and you can find a variety of do-it-yourself software programs such as FrontPage. For more advanced operations, programs such as WebTracker allow users to "track" the path of visitors to their site. Do they enter, read your homepage, and leave? Or do they consistently head to your page on ways to prevent coronary disease?
Even with the relative ease of establishing and maintaining a Web site, the question of doing it or not remains. "There are lots of tools out there that make it easy to build a site," acknowledges Burke, adding that such programs may well serve an agency looking to establish a basic homepage.
For those looking to fully exploit the benefits of the Web, he suggests hiring at least a part-time consultant using the analogy that "I may have a lot of power tools in my basement, but do you really want me to build you a house?" An agency should approach the construction of a Web page with its business goals in mind, he says. "What is it going to accomplish in the overall context of your business? Will it add to and grow your business? Will it make it more efficient?"
Knowing the answers to such questions can prove an enormous help in selecting an outside provider. For the most part, admits Burke, there "are a lot of 18-year-olds who can build a pretty rockin’ site. They have the skills. The key is in getting someone who knows to ask the right questions and can understand the application that you want to apply."
He advises not only asking for a list of sites the person has developed but for a list of references the Web designer in question has worked for. With the plethora of WebMaster certification programs available, an increasing number of people are taking up Web design as a second or part-time job.
This may prove a boon for the home health agency looking to develop a presence on the Web but not willing to spend a king’s ransom in doing it. At its most expensive (with graphic interfaces, site planning, and back-end programming), Web-page design and maintenance can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Somewhere in the middle price range, agencies may find themselves paying between $50 and $150 an hour to a freelance HTML programmer. And, for a baseline Web site utilizing clip art and off-the-shelf programs, costs can run between $100 or $150 for the software alone. Add to that the cost of a Web host — another $30 or $40 a month — and you are still running a low-budget operation.
To keep host costs down, Burke suggests looking at local e-mail or Internet service providers as many of them also offer host services using their domain name. In this case, your site would be listed as a segment of the host providers — www.AcmeInternetAccess/XYZhomehealth/ for example — rather than as www.XYZhomehealth.com. If you choose the latter option, keep in mind that there is a initial registration and annual renewal fee involved, about $70, Burke says.
In some cases, outside companies buy domain names in bulk. Then, when a company goes to register its own domain name and finds that it has already been purchased, it’s forced to pay a large sum to the former firm for its use or devise a new name altogether. For this reason, Leahy encourages any agency considering registering for their own domain name to do so at once, especially since from his experience he sees the Web becoming a "phenomenal source of referrals in the future."
Already, he says, about a third of all inquiries on the Internet are health care-related. Who needs a better reason than that to get on the Web?
Sources
• Tom Burke, Director of Marketing Communications, net.Genesis, 215 First St., Cambridge, MA 02142. Telephone: (617) 577-9800.
• Larry Leahy, MHA, CHCE, Director of Program Integrity, Beaumont Home Health Service, No. 1621, 1501 Mockingbird Lane, Suite 404, Victoria, TX 77904. Telephone: (512) 578-0762.
Subscribe Now for Access
You have reached your article limit for the month. We hope you found our articles both enjoyable and insightful. For information on new subscriptions, product trials, alternative billing arrangements or group and site discounts please call 800-688-2421. We look forward to having you as a long-term member of the Relias Media community.