When you’re under the weather, it should be easy to find care nearby with the click of a button. If we can book a flight, take an online class, and trade stocks all from our smartphones, shouldn’t this tool help with our medical needs, too?
Today, healthcare patients and their caretakers expect a seamless digital experience at every step of their journey, just like when they’re shopping online or calling an Uber. Unfortunately, most providers are falling short on delivering this type of customer experience.
Enter: NextCare Urgent Care.
NextCare Urgent Care understood that a modern website design that aligns with the in-person patient experience and other touchpoints in the patient journey would meet the empowered healthcare patient’s needs. Also, a cohesive and improved customer experience could streamline the often complicated process of finding care. They hired us based on our healthcare marketing expertise and track record of delivering websites that perform through optimizing CX.
NextCare Holdings, Inc., is one of the nation’s largest providers of urgent care and occupational medical services. Today, NextCare Holdings operates 147 urgent care facilities across 11 states — under six unique brands. Without a doubt, NextCare Urgent Care is a crucial access point for many Americans who would otherwise be unable to access affordable, high-quality health care.
How do you revamp the website of a large healthcare provider while...
And do it all before the upcoming flu season?
Because of our previous healthcare content marketing work, we know that the patient customer experience must be at the forefront of any healthcare website design. By developing a highly optimized website with desirable features like real-time wait times and a mobile version for increasingly important on-the-go usage, we were confident we could elevate NextCare’s website with a patient-centered approach.
Through interviews with key stakeholders, we found that visiting an urgent care facility tends to be something people think about only when the need arises, and proximity is the main deciding factor for choosing a provider.
Since everyone needs medical attention from time to time, we narrowed our audience using proximity as our north star. We took a mobile-first mindset so that potential patients in need of care could easily find a NextCare Urgent Care location nearby on a desktop or their smartphone. Leveraging native device location-based capabilities would be key to connecting users to the nearest facility — NextCare’s most significant patient conversion opportunity.
We also identified that preliminary questions about insurance and services mattered most to a patient before seeking care. Another key finding in our research was that patients needed a better understanding of what can be treated at an urgent care facility versus an emergency room. We determined that NextCare Urgent Care must be positioned as a one-stop-shop for quality, quick care that accepts a wide range of insurance while also offering payment options for those without insurance.
Enhancing the website was an opportunity to create something that exceeded patient expectations and delivered a competitive advantage for NextCare Urgent Care.
At the outset, our strategy was to set a tone focused on approachability. By displaying NextCare Urgent Care as a trusted and affordable option and including features like up-to-the-minute wait times, we knew we could make NextCare stand out to potential patients, especially those who may be evaluating several healthcare providers.
What’s the prescription for a good healthcare website? Keep reading to see how our four-part solution delivered huge results for NextCare.
We wanted the site to feel safe, clean, and professional, just like how one should feel when they visit any healthcare provider. We intentionally designed the website to make the scroll experience easy and calm for users who may already be experiencing stress because they’re not feeling great.
An online experience that ties to an offline experience is the backbone of what a Customer Experience agency can design and provide. Our primary focus on this project was on enabling users to find an urgent care location closest to them as efficiently as possible. For our location finder, we utilized the API provided by NextCare Urgent Care’s patient management system, Solvhealth, to dynamically display wait times for the various locations. We also provided easy, smart links to schedule an appointment, get directions, and even order Uber and Lyft to the facility at the press of a button. Rather than having an API call on every single location detail page, we modified the site so that the map API was only called on location search pages, saving NextCare major dollars — we’re talking a savings of up to 94% per month!
We also knew that with more than 145 locations, a Local Map Pack strategy for “near me” searches and creating a management plan for the Google My Business listings would be two tremendous opportunities to improve SEO, page load speed, customer experience, and performance optimizations.
No matter the vertical, content is still king.
We determined the most important content on NextCare Urgent Care’s website was wait times at locations — this allowed potential patients to see where they could get treated the quickest. Creating strategic header and title tags and updating page structure to be scannable and easily digested made a clear path for users to navigate to these location pages easily.
By establishing a content hierarchy structure informed by content models, we also helped patients understand the online check-in process and what medical issues fall under urgent care treatment versus ER treatment. Because NextCare housed six different urgent care brands, developing a consistent voice and tone was key to establishing NextCare Urgent Care as a parent brand that felt patient-oriented and created trust.
Because of our extensive experience developing healthcare websites, we knew firsthand about the importance of Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance in the healthcare arena. Making sure NextCare Urgent Care’s ADA score was high would be crucial for making sure as many users as possible could easily use the site with the best experience possible. We substantially improved accessibility by using appropriate font sizes, colors, and backgrounds; labeling our interactable elements; and building the site’s front-end with screen readers in mind.
Accessibility was also a focus in our visual design, both with diverse and inclusive imagery and color choices. To market NextCare’s services as approachable and attainable for community members, we also prioritized using design patterns that translated complex industry jargon into clear and easily understandable language.
When building the site, we ensured that NextCare Urgent Care’s content managers would have an easy time updating information and adding new locations in the back-end so that authors could make site changes intuitively and without the help of a developer.
We also wanted to help them organize their Health & Wellness blog content. The site structure was reorganized to include a Health Resources section, where site authors could easily post articles on various health topics. With this adaptation, the in-house NextCare Urgent Care marketing team would be able to apply their expertise to become thought leaders online with articles and blog posts that would be easy for users to find and browse.
The redesigned site launched during the COVID-19 pandemic, when most NextCare Urgent Care facilities were beginning to offer rapid COVID testing — causing a huge influx in website and foot traffic.
As we neared the website’s launch, we added more COVID-related features such as dynamic icons that showcased which specific COVID services each clinic offered. Knowing that rapid testing and antibody testing would be a service provided for the foreseeable future, we made sure these offerings had prime real estate on the site. This forethought would allow NextCare Urgent Care’s marketing team to edit and repurpose content as the patient needs may evolve down the road.
So, how did NextCare Urgent Care’s new website measure up?
✓ We ensured the patient experience came first by vastly improving the ease of scheduling with real-time wait times on search listings and location pages, enhanced location-based search results, and new CTA buttons for easy-to-schedule appointments.
✓ We drove online check-ins, streamlining the process of finding care by developing a more accurate location search, which allowed patients to search by zip code, 10-30 mile radius, and via a mini-map.
✓ We successfully positioned services as approachable and attainable by consolidating NextCare’s various brands under one umbrella and improving the site’s look and feel for all potential patients.
We think the numbers below speak for themselves!
“We’re extremely excited to launch our new website. This state-of-the-art platform will further establish NextCare as one of the most technologically sophisticated healthcare providers within our healthcare ecosystem.”
- John Julian - CEO of NextCare
