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Healio Version 5.0: Respect their time. Earn their trust. Give them what they want.
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“Respect their time. Earn their trust. Give them what they want.” This vision statement has become our mantra as we tackle the task of rebuilding our Healio web platform. Although they seem simple concepts, each pillar of the triad is the product of hard-fought experience, healthy internal debate and solid, data-driven research.
The vision statement emerged at the confluence of some important conceptual developments:
- Decision to entirely rebuild our tech platform;
- Drive to adopt a more data-driven decision-making process for both site functionality and performance assessment;
- Development of a more personalized Healio experience for users; and
- Dedication to advance our maturation as a user driven organization.
I do not remember the order in which those concepts gained momentum. I do know the mantra crystallized as we dove into the early stages of conceptualizing the new version of the site. I know we are living it when we reach some painful decision point and someone, not me, calls us out by saying something like, “is that the best solution to give the user what they want?” Makes me happy every time.
Respect their time
“I just do not have time,” said every physician ever in describing the challenges of modern medicine. And they are not kidding. The daily demands on our readers are incredible and well-documented elsewhere. Suffice it to say that given long work hours, emergencies and on-call, increasing documentation demands of EHR systems and, oh yeah, the need to heal patients and save lives, a website that unreasonably delays user satisfaction will not be well received or highly regarded.
Stated plainly, we are determined to make Healio 5.0 the fastest, most intuitive medical website available for physicians and other health care professionals. If we build it, they will come. And stay. And return.
Earn their trust
User testing dramatically proved how important it is to gain the trust of users. Testing in the news section allowed us to watch as users exposed to Healio for the first time made frequent reference to ads and ad placement. Too many ads too soon and users questioned the independence of the content. Clearly, trust was an important factor in how users assess, value and choose which websites they will give their precious time and attention.
Ad placement on the current news section of Healio – and many other sites as well – is the product of “viewability standards” introduced by advertisers circa 2016. Third-party systems allow advertisers to track the performance of their ads and impose penalties on publishers if ads are not “in view” for a given measure of time. Sadly, many publishers pushed more ads higher up on the page, gaining greater viewability at the price of user trust. Reluctantly, we did, too. By now, we have learned how to achieve high viewability for ads in less intrusive ways. That is a win for users and advertisers.
In creating the user experience for Healio 5.0, a team that included Healio Strategic Solutions Sales and Advertising Operations specialists dug deep into the data to include high performing ad placements that meet our advertisers’ needs, eliminate more intrusive and lower performing ad placements, and carefully balance our first mantra with the reality of our business needs.
But earning the trust of our users is much more than just ad placement. As a web platform, Healio 5.0 must compliantly organize and serve content to users that ranges from accredited CME to independent news to peer-review journal articles to advertiser sponsored content. It is essential that Healio 5.0 allows readers to quickly and easily navigate across the platform, instantly identify the type of content they are viewing and discern or disclose any commercial influence. The new navigation is clear, clean and simple, offering users three level 1 options: News, CME or Journals. Each option delivers content to users that is clearly transparent and, in the case of CME, fully separate and compliant.
Our Healio news organization is fiercely independent in the service of our readers. In Healio 5.0, we are introducing something dubbed the “trust box.” Here users can find, at-a-glance, the author and contributor information, content sources (such as print publications) and disclosure statements. “Author pages” allow users to see everything Healio has published from a given source. In instances when we publish content contributed by advertisers or sponsors, that information is clearly stated as well — and does not carry the Healio brand.
It is no accident that earn their trust is the longest section of this post, for trust is the hardest thing to earn and the easiest to lose. In Healio 5.0, we are committed to earning and keeping our users’ trust.
Give them what they want
“Begin with the end in mind,” Steven Covey said. The last pillar of our mantra is fittingly where the idea of Healio 5.0 began. When we launched Healio in 2012, we had provided for every possibility; that is, everything we could possibly want. We made sure that the navigation showed all the stuff that we produced, from news to books and back again, on every page. There were paid ads and “house ads” for our products, prominent links to our meetings and columns and on and on, on almost every page. Good for us, we thought. But not so good for our users as their behavior demonstrated.
From the start, the data was clear. Users were purposeful people. Whether they linked to the site through an email or came to the site via search, whether they wanted CME or news or journal information, their behavior was similar. They came for something specific, consumed the content they came for and left (does that not sound like what busy, driven physicians would do?). Anything that got in the way or slowed them down led to increased rates of abandonment.
Those who did move from one content type to another — browsers — were less common but just as purposeful. They were not browsing out of curiosity. They were looking for something specific, and the more stuff we put in their way, the more difficult we made their mission.
With Healio 5.0, we set out to “give them what they want.” Article-level pages get straight to the point. The article title and content will always dominate the first screen. The top of the page is more concise, including navigation. Only essentials are allowed between the user and their “want.” Initial user testing shows a marked decrease in user frustration and confusion and increase in user satisfaction. Bingo.
Landing and listing pages are more intuitive and purpose driven as well. “What does the user want to do on this page?” was our starting point. The clarity of the navigation comes to play here, with fewer and simpler decision-tree-type options guiding users to quickly and easily find what they are looking for.
That sounds a lot easier than it was. It is not easy to NOT take every opportunity to offer a user everything – EVERY SINGLE THING they might possibly click on, especially when it is good, high quality content we love. We had to learn to trust the data and trust that our users know what they want. Then get out of their way and give it to them.
Three pillars
The three pillars of Healio Version 5.0 represent more than a slogan or catch phrase. They are backed by the owner and management with the resources necessary for a successful launch. They are the touchstones for the interdepartmental teams tackling the build, and most importantly, they represent our commitment to our users.
- John C. Carter
Chief Operating Officer, The Wyanoke Group
https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-c-carter-a42aba11/
Twitter: @JohnCCarter
Disclosure: Carter is Chief Operating Officer of the Wyanoke Group®. Healio®, Healio® Strategic Solutions, Healio® Live and SLACK® Incorporated are wholly owned subsidiaries of The Wyanoke Group®. He has been a SLACK® Incorporated or Wyanoke Group employee since 1982. Along the way he has worked as editor, writer, marketer, product and project developer and manager.