Some new fundamental features that every health site should have

The Internet is moving at light speed but a lot of IT organizations move at a turtles pace compared to what’s happening with technology. Here are some fundamentals that every health site (product.com website) should have now.

1. Ensure that your site works with all the latest browsers especially Chrome, Firefox and IE 9.0

2. Ensure that your site is compatible with all smartphone browsers.

3. Eliminate FLASH and convert any flash content into HTML 5.0. Flash is on the way out thanks in large part to Apple’s iPad. Even Microsoft is endorsing HTML 5

4. Deep link your site. This means taking your key content and linking it deep with other health related sites. Consumers and patients are looking for credible health information, help them get there.

5. Use roll-over definitions for complicated health terms. When someone rolls over a work they don’t understand a pop-up box will appear with the definition.

6. Don’t use off-line content and repurpose on your website. It shows that you don’t care whether your visitors understand the content or not.

7. Use call-outs to highlight the key information you want your visitors to take away from visiting your site.

8. Keep content simple, easy to read & easy to understand even if it means hiring someone to write new content.

9. Don’t use an opening animation. A lot of people access health sites at work and it’s not good for someone who sits in a cube to hear “welcome to depression.com”. People do not like it when someone walks onto the home page to welcome them and tries to assist them in navigating the site. It is intrusive.

10. Keep your home page simple, clean and lead your visitors to the information they are going to want. Have more than one homepage targeted at different segments like current patients vs. prospects. Use cookies to determine if someone if revisiting your site. If they are serve them up a new homepage with more reenforcement messages.

11. You pictures of real people not actors or actor portrayals. If you have to ask why than you are in trouble.

12. Make sure you site loads in 3-4 seconds. Anymore time than that and people are going to click off your site.

13. Include the ability to Tweet or post your site/page on Facebook via social media callouts on each page. If you have a good site and content share it with others !

Finally make sure that you test and validate your site for every change you make. This means testing that all your links work, that all your tools work and than the site loads quickly and is viewed the way you had anticipated it should be viewed. You’d be surprised how many sites look really bad on Google’s Chrome or Safari compared to other browsers.