How ecommerce strategies can support enhanced patient experience
Consumers now expect fast and efficient connection to the information they need on websites – provider organizations need to meet these expectations.
When Amazon upended the retail sector, an entire industry was forced to innovate and to compete. Change wasn’t just a consideration – it was a mode of survival. Now, shopping has never been easier – it’s fast and mobile, and transactions are completed with only a few clicks. Consumers want the same from healthcare, and they expect the same level of convenience.
Increasingly, healthcare consumers are seeking alternatives if care isn’t accessible with the tap of a button. A 2022 Healthcare Consumer Report by NRC Health found that more than a third of consumers had no brand preference for health systems. Even so, consumers are also fiercely loyal, and they will return to health systems that offer a great digital experience.
To compete with market disrupters – and to attract and retain patients – healthcare leaders must be consumer-obsessed to create a “shoppable” experience full of choice and convenience that reduces the barriers to get care. The best approach is adopting the best from ecommerce. When strategies, such as performance, mobile accessibility and multi-modal search, are paired with the data intelligence, health systems can serve more people with the same resources.
Speed and mobile are mission-critical
Digital-health leaders know that mobile traffic has – or will soon – surpass desktop as the primary touchpoint to access their websites. But being mobile friendly is not enough, as milliseconds matter on small screens. In fact, more than half of patients leave mobile pages that take more than three seconds to load.
Consumers’ first impression is the difference between engagement and abandonment. Let’s face it, we’re living in an “instant everything” culture where impatience — especially for frustrating websites — sends patients and appointments the other way.
The benefit of page performance goes beyond better engagement. It’s also about organic growth. Google has always prioritized the user experience and does everything it can to deliver relevant and helpful content to users. Today, the search giant places a technical premium on performance, and mobile-page speed is a critical ranking signal. In short, Google rewards speed, which for health systems is a strategy to cast a wider net to meet patients at the point of discovery.
Modern web architecture, widely adopted by ecommerce retailers, uses next-generation technology to guarantee lightning-fast performance across all channels. Today, the ability to pre-render web pages on global CDNs and caches – using APIs to hydrate dynamic content – ensures that care is easy to discover from search results, and that pages are purpose-built to “grab” a patient's attention with speed.
Streamlining search to surface best-fit care
When visiting an ecommerce website, an estimated 69 percent of users go directly to the search box to start their journey. And it’s no surprise, because with a tap of a button, onsite search gets consumers to where they’re going. Unfortunately, on healthcare websites, search is often hard to find, and results rarely match intent with appropriate care. But there’s a fix.
Thanks to decades of advancements in natural language processing and artificial Intelligence, onsite search can now offer multi-modal and real-time results to guide patients to the right care, at the right location, at the right time.
Imagine a single search bar located on any page that can capture intent and return appropriate venues of care. And instead of traditional find-a-doc directories, onsite search becomes the find-care experience where providers, clinics, telehealth and even answers to questions can all surface. Whether it’s booking an appointment, researching a provider or scheduling the soonest flu shot, onsite search is simple, powerful and streamlined. It’s time to re-consider the potential of onsite search, and to remove the unnecessary steps that hinder patients from easily finding care.
Data intelligence is care orchestration
To adopt ecommerce strategies, health systems must have the digital awareness to orchestrate how, when, and where care is accessed. Ecommerce for healthcare sounds like a silver bullet, but if it’s implemented incorrectly, health systems risk overextending their resources by offering appointments to patients that don’t consider provider's preferences.
Proper care orchestration begins with data unification – from capacity and utilization to cost – to balance the supply of care against patient demand. The data infrastructure to operate in real-time, coordinating between doctors, nurses and clinics, is what powers a digital experience that’s friction-free, while at the same time protecting health system resources.
As long as patients have choice about their health, they remain consumers who value convenience and a quality experience. By reducing digital friction and making the complex simple, health systems can match consumer expectations with speed, accessibility and one-stop scheduling – all while intelligently protecting clinicians’ workloads.
Consumer expectations are in constant flux. Technology, social influence and personal experience all shape how we choose products and services. Ecommerce knows this. Healthcare is no different.
Chris Carruthers is chief innovation officer at DexCare.