Mercy Medical Center
TAXONOMY & INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
WEBSITE REDESIGN
problem
Mercy Medical Center wanted to combine two of it proprietary sites while upgrading to a more modern look. Mercy wanted to emphasize patient access and scheduling, while securing its position as a market leader.
solution
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A conversion-based design focus and segmentation to generate maximum leads.
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A modern design with a user-centered approach to navigation and content.
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A focus on scalability for any future state needs.
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Positioning as a market leader and an emphasis on user empowerment.
result
A modern site with restructured content and a services first approach that was supported by taxonomy and content modeling to allow for content to live siloed within the Sitecore CMS but pulled in when the user needed to complete a goal or task.
summary
Throughout the project we employed a dual agile and waterfall approach that was divided into several deliveries: Homepage, UX Foundations, Care Service, Providers, Appointments, Locations, Providers, Events, and Search.
With the goal of modernization in hand, the Valtech project team set out to silo care services, provider and location content while employing a taxonomy strategy to pull in said content via automatic content definitions and tagging. This approach would allow for ultimate flexibility and remove some responsibility from the content managers.
In addition, automating appointments and provider schedules via an integration with EPIC was of the utmost importance for providers and patients. The Valtech team employed a startegy to handle the nuance between primary care providers and specialists due a difference in process and need.
team
Valtech Baltimore Project Team
role
Support to UX Lead Paul Butcher
Lead Digital Strategist & UX Architect (June 2021 - Launch)
can you find what you need?
USER TESTING & INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
treejack test
Our target audience consisted of mostly female users about 55 and older, with aging parents. It has been studied that mostly women create appointments and tend to take the responsibility of caring for their elderly parents.
Using a treejack test via Optimal Workshop, we tested a newly restructured sitemap, which is a hierarchical diagram of a Mercy’s website that shows how pages are prioritized, linked, and labeled.
Test participants were given 11 tasks and asked to click through the sitemap until they were confident in their answers.
insights.
1. Make direct scheduling for primary physicians and specialists available on physician list pages.
2. Surface all providers on appointment pages or within the scheduling experience.
3. Display providers tagged with a condition on condition detail pages
4. Display location(s) on provider list items such as provider results, and build physician lists to be filterable by location.
5. Build Contact pages that promote and enable self-service, where possible.
insights
6. Surface pre-filtered Find a Doctor lists within search results to form more streamlined paths to goal completion.
7. Surface tagged treatments and conditions in search results when a service line taxonomy term is the keyword.
8. Provide context that users are leaving the site and what they can expect to find at their external destination, especially when navigating to MyChart.
9. Include Telemedicine content in search and Find a Doctor results for all related terms (telehealth, virtual health, etc).
10. Surface CTAs for high-impact events and seminars within appropriate sections of the site, incl. automatically via taxonomy on location and care pages
How does it work?
TAXONOMY & CONTENT MODELS
care
We’ve found that tagging other content items with Care items is often easier to manage than the other way around. Care items can include taxons such as conditions, treatments, and specialties. We focused on A) establishing all of the required relationships to serve automated related content and B) to focus on making accurate, timely content management as frictionless as possible. This model strengthens relationships in a way that makes sense to the modern user, improving outcomes from digital efforts.
Service Line Landing
Care Detail Page - Specialty
Care Detail Page - Condition
location
There is an industry trend toward positioning health services companies with multiple locations as a health system. This model serves Mercy by connecting primary & specialty care to reinforce cross-location acquisition & retention, positioning Mercy as a one stop shop for every medical need, and strengthening the overall brand. By leveraging multiple content types for locations, this proposed structure can vastly improve users’ ability to find a Mercy location no matter their path through the site, boosting acquisition from digital efforts.
Location Landing Page
Care Detail Page - Specialty
Location Detail Page
physicians
The ultimate goal for any health system website is scheduling appointments. That means, no matter where a user is on the site, there need to be intuitive means to transact. By connecting physicians to other content types, we are able to automatically display them in relevant ways throughout the site, shortening the user path distance to conversion across the board.
Care Detail Page-Conditions
Location Detail Page
Find a Doctor Results
developed and deployed.
SITE REDESIGN
