The document discusses the digital redevelopment process of the Siteman Cancer Center's website, emphasizing the challenges faced in balancing the needs of various stakeholders and the importance of upgrading to improve patient experience. It highlights the lessons learned from their case study, including the significance of digital governance, effective content management, and proper SEO practices during site migration. The redesigned site ultimately increased traffic and improved conversion rates, serving as a valuable tool for patient engagement.

1. Digital Redevelopment:
Overcoming Challenges to Improve Your Patients’ Online Experience
October 24, 2017
HCIC Annual Conference
Derek Mabie of Evolve Digital
Labs
Dustin Horn of Siteman Cancer
Center

2. 2
Dustin Horn
Senior Manager of Digital
Marketing and Communications,
Siteman Cancer Center
Derek Mabie
President and Founder,
Evolve Digital Labs

3. 3
Does your current website best serve
your patients?
and
Does it satisfy all of your executives,
clinicians, and stakeholders?

4. 4
o Why would we need to upgrade our site?
o How do I get buy-in from our decision makers?
o What digital platform(s) are best for our situation?
o How should we design our site and content to highlight our
strengths and eliminate unnecessary information?
o How do we launch the new website with a smooth transition?

7. 7
CASE STUDY: SITEMAN CANCER CENTER
Issues

8. Marketing
IT
Execs, Clinicians,
Stakeholders
Balancing Act Noise of “Why we can’t do this.”
“…it’s just the slow
pace of health
care…”
“Process won’t
work.”
“We need to fix X, Y, Z
first.”
“limited
budget”
“Who will be the
lead for
maintenance?”
“par for the course”
“it is what it
is.”
“We need IT buy-in”
“We just can’t.”
“…it’s a paradigm
shift”
“let’s circle back.”
“think outside of the box”
“don’t have the
resources”

9. Lesson Learned: Pay Your (Technology) Debt
9
• To remain relevant to the end user,
IT/marketing teams must ensure
they are following best practices.
• Everyone gets off track, but when
you do must pay your debt to
regain your reputation with the end
user.

10. 10
Siteman Cancer Center’s Website was
Holding the Organization Back
 Search visibility in search engines was
poor, along with on-site search.
 Page structure was convoluted, and did
not make sense to the end user.
 Navigating was laborious and
unintuitive.
Site Structure Inhibited Patient’s Ability To
Get the Patients’ “Jobs” Done
June 2015
2%
80%
Only
of the Pages
were getting
of the Entries Structure was Difficult to Work In and
Update
Result was Not Reflective of Us as a Brand

11. 11
Timeline
2013
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
Leadership agrees a re-
design is needed
Case is made for a major
overhaul
(not just a Band-Aid)
Keep in Mind: Ultimately, this project took 2 Years to complete

12. 12
2014
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
Decision to Use Wordpress Platform. To
satisfy the greatest number of users, Wordpress
made the most sense from a business
perspective
Develop project charter. Engage
work groups around cancer center
2015
Q1

13. 13
Build New Site: How Did We Choose Our
Platform?
Thought about support first.
IT support had been a long standing issue internally and we needed a way to
streamline web development and projects.
Chose WordPress CMS:
• Open-source
• Washington University already had a stable WordPress environment
• Hosting would be cheap or free
• Offered flexibility to meet needs quickly through plug-ins
1
2

14. Select Developer.
Sign Statement of Work with
Integrity STL
Information architecture
14
2014
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
Decision to Use Wordpress Platform. To
satisfy the greatest number of users, Wordpress
made the most sense from a business
perspective
Develop project charter. Engage
work groups around cancer center
2015
Q1

15. The Content Problem
15
Poor site maintenance and
low governance caused the
site to be filled with too
many pages and conflicting
one-off problems.
Regular content
maintenance, policies, and
cleaning are essential for a
positive user experience.
This starts with excellent
information architecture,
laying ground rules and
common sense navigation.

16. Everything Must Go
16
• The hosting change meant we
had to (needed to) clean our
content before we moved.
• There was no content migration
– no pages, no files. We were
starting from the ground up.
• This meant the migration plan
had to be flawless to reduce
negative effects.
Do you have a yard sale at your old house or your new one?

17. 17
014
Q3 Q4
Platform. To
rs, Wordpress
business
roject charter. Engage
s around cancer center
2015
Q1
Select Developer.
Sign Statement of Work with
Integrity STL
Information architecture
Q2 Q3
Begin Building
Functional Requirements
Content
•Wireframes & Design.
•Engage Evolve in
Migration &
Optimization.

18. Better User Experience
Actionable & Trackable Calls to
Action (CTA)
Intuitive Navigation
Gain Ground
Help Users Complete Jobs Steps
Benefits of Thoughtful Wireframing

19. Consumer Job Steps
19
To meet a patient in their jobs to be done journey pages on the
website should answer these questions:
DEFINE LOCATE PREP CONFIRM EXECUTE MONITOR MODIFY
“How can I gain
knowledge for
my need?”
“What are the
treatment
options?”
“Why is this
treatment
option best? “
“Who is the
right
physician?”
“When can I
meet
physician?”
“Where can I find pre- and post-
appointment information?”
Outcome Solution Brand

20. Consumer Job Steps in Action
20
Outcome Solution Brand
“signs of colon
cancer”
“metastatic colon
cancer treatment”
“directions to Siteman
Cancer Center”

21. 21
2015
Q1
er.
ork with
ation architecture
Q2 Q3
Begin Building
Functional Requirements
Content
•Wireframes & Design.
•Engage Evolve in
Migration &
Optimization.
Q4 Q1
2016
•Finalize Design.
•Finalize Content.
•Begin Migration Work.
•Launch Site.

22. Source: Google Analytics
22
Without proper planning, a steep drop in
SEO traffic after a site re-design is all too
common.
With CMS migrations, SEO traffic can even
see multiple drops!
Dangers of a Poorly Managed Site Migration

23. Migration Overview
23
Create inbound link document for Siteman.wustl.edu and ensure
links are properly redirected to the most appropriate page.
Create legacy page documentation and ensure content downloads
are redirected to their new locations.
Provide canonicalization tagging for Siteman Cancer Center
Content
Assess use of temporary redirects (302 and 303) 404 Errors
Phase 1:
Migration Mapping & IT Support

24. Provide optimizations for Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
Provide URLs improvements based on targeted keywords
Eliminate potential duplicate content and outline corrective actions
Provide improvements to the onsite linking strategy
Phase 2:
Site Migration & Marketing Implementation
Migration Overview
24
Phase 1:
Migration Mapping & IT Support

25. Ensure that Google Search Console is properly setup and
sitemaps are submitted
Ensure tracking and reporting set up with Google Tag Manager
Post launch server/technical analysis to address SEO factors
Phase 3:
Post Migration & Quality Assurance
Migration Overview
25
Phase 2:
Site Migration & Marketing Implementation
Phase 1:
Migration Mapping & IT Support

26. Critical SEO Considerations
Follow URL naming best practices for visitors to easily
navigate your site
Creating title tags that accurately and concisely describe
page contents
Creating enticing and relevant Meta Descriptions
Redirect strategy in place to for for help alleviate SEO
loss
Migration Overview
26
!
!
!
!

27. 27
CASE STUDY: SITEMAN CANCER CENTER
Recap

28. 28
Marketing Leaders Pushed for Change
Online under-
performance hindered
growth potential
Opportunity existed to
convert site visitors to
patients at low cost
per acquisition rates
Competitors better
positioned online
Segmentation was
needed for
strategic growth

29. 29
Tackling New Site Challenges Head On
In order to make the
move to WordPress,
Siteman had to migrate
the site to a new
internal hosting team.
When switching
content management
systems, the entire
URL structure
changed.
There were major
concerns about the
effects of these changes,
so Siteman asked
Evolve to assist.
Siteman Cancer Center
could not afford to lose
domain authority or
organic search visibility

30. 30
Requirements of New Site
Satisfy stakeholders at:
• Siteman Cancer Center
• Barnes Jewish Hospital
• Washington University
School of Medicine
Create conversion
funnels for patients by
treatments &
procedures.
Rebuild content in
cancer specific sections
with customer centric
messaging.
Focus on people,
treatments and
procedures

31. Results: The New Siteman Website in Now a
Tool
31
Today, the site is used to move patients from:
• Outcome – search on “signs of colon cancer” to…
• Solution – search on “metastatic colon cancer treatment”
to…
• The capable hands of Siteman Cancer Center.
Outcome Solution Brand
“signs of colon
cancer”
“metastatic colon
cancer treatment”
“directions to Siteman
Cancer Center”

32. Results Overview
32
Tremendous increases in:
Traffic
Percent of visitors to leads
Increased use of “Click to Call” & “Schedule
Appt.”
Visibility increased dramatically
Session Levels
Only weeks after launch, traffic and daily session
level were higher than the entire previous quarter!
Ranking Changes:
Went from 19 pages ranked on top 1-3 to 49

33. Key Takeaways
33
o You are never in the ‘wrong spot’ – even if you’ve recently updated or think that there
are too many obstacles, you can still get things on the right track.
o Establish a Digital Governance Policy – you aren’t just creating a new site; when done
correctly, this affects your brand and business goals.
o Audit your site to discover problem areas, inefficiencies, and missed opportunities.
o Find opportunities to highlight your strengths and to eliminate unnecessary
information.
o Understand the pitfalls that accompany site migration regarding content, domain
authority, and search engine optimization. If needed, seek help from those who can help.

34. Q & A Session
For questions after the conference:
Dustin Horn: hornd@wustl.edu
Derek Mabie: derekm@evolvedigitallabs.com
Digital Redevelopment:
Overcoming Challenges to Improve Your Patients’ Online Experience