Having been involved with healthcare-related digital communities and websites since 2007, I’ve had the opportunity to work with a wide variety of healthcare staffing firms. Over the past 14 years, I’ve seen many different approaches to building agency websites; custom development versus pre-built plug-ins, minimalist design versus artistic work of art, use of in-house staff versus outsourced development, and many more. While each of these approaches will vary by company, timelines and budget, there 4 basic fundamentals that I believe each firm should keep in mind in order to create an effective agency
website:
1) Build for a mobile-first experience. For most firms, a significant majority of your audience will now be accessing your website via a mobile device, some firms reporting as much as 75-80%. As such, your developers/development partners should be designing and building out the technology with “mobile- first” in mind. In a mobile environment, your site should be easy to navigate, compact, lightweight and its pages should load quickly. Beware of too many unnecessarily large images (use an image compression tool to reduce their size and make sure they are properly optimized in your database), intricate and bloated designs, and too much focus on laptop presentation. Know that Google’s recent algorithm update for organic search rankings pays very close attention to a site’s mobile presentation. Website that are slow to load or don’t play well in a mobile environment will hurt your SEO (search engine optimization).
2) Tell your firm’s story and what makes you different upfront. Visitors shouldn’t have to guess who you are, what you do, how to contact you, how to apply to a job on your job board or any other key information. This should be simple, clear, concise and “above the fold” (top pane) of your website. Use this “billboard” to differentiate yourself from the competition in a meaningful way. The market for travel healthcare professionals is extremely competitive right now so let your audience know as soon as it hits your website what your firm brings to the table and make it easy for them to work with you.
3) Avoid opinion-based website design and development. Referencing an old phrase “opinions are like belly-buttons…everyone has one.” This was never more true in website design and development. As you work through the scope and design process, be cautious about listening to too many outside opinions. There is only one opinion that matters – your target audience’s. Understand your audience’s needs and what kind of experience they expect when taking the time to interact with an agency website. Focus on the user experience. Ideally, before you begin the design and build process, engage members of your target audience through focus groups or user experience (UX) input sessions. If you are redeveloping an existing site, ask you users what they like/what works and what they don’t like/doesn’t work. Find out which one of your competitor's sites they are working with as well as industry-related sites so you can see what draws them to spend time on those websites. Use tools like Google Analytics to see what’s working and what isn’t working on your current site – use solid data and information to drive decisions and directions, not opinions.
4) Monitor and track! Websites are never “done”, they just evolve. As soon as you release a new website or update, begin the monitoring process immediately and track progress. Set goals and measure against those goals and adjust accordingly. Be mindful of timeframes – don’t overreact to areas of under-performance (or over-performance) based on a day or two of data. Set a realistic period to watch progress on your KPIs and make thoughtful and informed design/development adjustment decisions (2 weeks, 30 days?) based on performance over that time-frame