website2Go

 
Website2Go ranked #1 in independent survey
 
George Washington University Hospital chose website2Go because our tools enable Lisa Saisselin, the hospital's marketing director, to keep the site fresh and up to date, without needing to learn professional webmaster skills. The website2Go Editor system ensures that site navigation is always consistent, without broken links or missing pages, and it couldn't be easier to add search engine keywords to every page.

In addition to winning several awards for effective medical information content, this site was recognized in an unsolicited review as a sterling example of user friendliness by BCSweb, a Washington-area Internet consulting firm. Following are excerpts from that review.

 
George Washington University Hospital: The Washington Area's Healthiest Hospital Website
BCSweb analyzed six hospitals' websites in the DC metropolitan area focusing on website fitness, which contributes to a positive user experience. George Washington University Hospital's website ranked first, when compared to other local hospitals' websites.

In this analysis, hospitals' websites were compared based on the following key elements that affect user experience:

1. Navigation
2. Cross Linking
3. Load Time
4. Search Engine Friendly

 

Hospital

Navigation
(3 clicks or less from the start page)

Broken
Links

Missing
Pages/Images

Average
Page Size

Meta Tags

George Washington University Hospital
(www.gwhospital.com)

100%

None

None

Average page size: 14.7k with 90% between 10 and 20k.

All index and main pages use meta tags.

Suburban Hospital
(www.suburbanhospital.org)

39%

75

35 missing pages/images.

Average page size: 34k

43% of the total pages contain meta tags.

Childrenis National Medical Center
(www.cnmc.org)

98%

234

28 missing pages/images.

Average page size: 70.6k with 60% of the pages greater than 100K

1.8% of the total pages contain meta tags.

Georgetown University Hospital
(www.georgetownuniversityhospital.org)

94%

4

2 missing pages and 2 missing images.

Average page size: 34.0k

None of the pages use meta tags.

Washington Hospital Center
(www.whcenter.org)

75%

83

59 missing pages/images.

Average page size: 24.5k

12% of the total pages contain meta tags.

Inova Fairfax Hospital
(www.inova.org)

33%

3

2 missing pages.

Average page size: 15.9k

17% of the total pages contain meta tags.


 
Navigation
Net users are very much goal oriented and they usually skim over the site in order to reach their intended goal. Users don't have the patience to "drill down" a page if the information is hidden deep within the site.

Through a random poll conducted on 250 sites, 79% of net surfers polled agreed that navigation is the most important characteristic of a website, and only 66% were satisfied.

In the analysis, BCSweb found that users can reach 98% or more of the George Washington University Hospital and Children's National Medical Center's web pages within three clicks or less from the home page. This click rate is considered the industry standard for easy navigation. See table below for results of all other hospitals included in the analysis.

 
Cross Linking
Another important aspect of a site is the cross linking between pages. Almost 84% of net users polled by Jupiter Research leave the site due to broken links and slow load time. While every website may contain imperfections that affect the user experience, some imperfections are technical or structural deficiencies that often initiate greater user dissatisfaction than others. But overall, any imperfections may be looked at as landmines that website proprietors don't want users to come across.

With the exception of the George Washington University Hospital website, all of the other websites contained broken links or missing pages.

 
Load Time
According to Nielson NetRatings, almost 88% of Net users travel the Internet at a connection speed of 56Kbps or less. Graphically intensive websites, animation files, large document files, and other heavy website content, which increase the page sizes and load time, can easily discourage users with modestly powered modems.

The George Washington University Hospital website has an average page size of only 14.7k, with 90% between 10k and 20k.

 
Search Engine Friendly
Effective usage of meta tags, titles, and keywords will help promote the site and make information accessible to users. A survey by Roper Starch found that one third of net users spend more than two hours every week searching the Net and a NEC Research found that 80% of users fulfill their search expectations when searching.

George Washington University Hospital made the most effective use of metadata by including meta tags on all index pages and documents in their website.

To read the entire BCSweb report, see the PDF version.