Your hospital’s Web site has a wealth of information that is hopefully driving traffic to your site and engaging your visitors. If it is not, then perhaps it’s time to take a look at your site’s analytics and re-evaluate some things.

Use a metronome to play drums for timing and to stay on track. Use analytics to measure your Web site's performance.

Staying on Track with Analytics…And Metronomes

Having been playing drums for about 8 months now, I’m often reminded from my instructor to practice with a metronome to help me stay on time (on beat) and on track when my sticks connect to my drumheads in order to enhance the timing and mechanics of my performance.

I thought about how similar this was to Web site analytics and how they ultimately help you understand the performance of your Web site and the behavior of your visitors while keeping track of measurements.

Analytics are crucial for Web sites and should be added on all pages of your site. Having an analytics code on each page will help you track how visitors interacted with your site, among them:

• Where visitors came from

• What visitors did on your site

• If conversion goals were met

Using analytics will help you identify who your visitors are so you can craft content that is targeted to them, and can also help in identifying any weaknesses your site may have…or in the case of drumming, any time-related weaknesses you may have.

Ultimately, the data you observe from tracking analytics will help you make improvements and enhancements to your site in order to generate conversions…or the training you use your metronome for to improve your timing.

Did you know that AVID Design is an expert in healthcare Web site analytics, SEO and search engine marketing management? Contact us today to find out how we can track your hospital’s Web site analytics.

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Last month’s AVID Insight e-newsletter feature story introduced our audience to the typical hospital Web site life cycle process.

Sign up to receive our monthly e-newsletter, AVID Insight.

This month we aim to tackle the “Green Phase” of the life cycle, with emphasis on creating a solid foundation to maximize your hospital’s strategy and goals in order to lengthen the green.

Learn about these five key areas we recommend in order to maximize the green:

• Having a sound strategy and tactical implementation plan

• Expandable content architecture and Web platform technology

• Consistent actionable analytics

• Becoming a Web leader for your organization

• Web governance policies and dispersed authorship

Our May edition of AVID Insight hits inboxes later this week, so be on the lookout. Or, if you are not a subscriber to our monthly e-newsletter, sign up today and get all the latest and greatest information on healthcare marketing advice, trends, seminars and more.

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Earlier this week, Adweek reported on a Webtrends report that suggested “the performance of the average Facebook ad is abysmal.”

Although it made for a hot headline, it was perhaps not the most accurate—or fair—statement. And in the context of using Facebook ads to promote hospitals online, it might be completely misleading.

The metric used to gauge “abysmal” Facebook ad performance was CTR, an acronym for “click through rate,” which is a popular metric for analyzing PPC (pay per click) advertising. Most simply, CTR is a the percentage of clicks an ad gets in comparison to how many times it appears (these appearances are known as “impressions”). So, if an ad appears 100 times in day and 10 people click on the ad, the ad has a CTR of 10.0 percent.

The report said the average CTR for all industries 2010 was 0.051 percent, which declined from 2009’s 0.063.The worst performing CTRs were for healthcare ads, which reported 0.011 percent.

Regardless of year or industry, those are some very poor numbers. Abysmal, even.

But are they enough to say Facebook ad performance was abysmal in big bold headline letters? Not quite. Here are two reasons—with a particular emphasis on considering Facebook ads for hospital marketing and advertising.

Low CPMs: Brand Exposure for Pennies

Facebook offers two pricing models for its ads. The first is the more traditional PPC model of CPC, or “cost per click.” It’s exactly as it sounds: Every time somebody clicks on an ad, the advertiser is charged anywhere from a few cents to several dollars.

The other model is CPM, which stands for “cost per thousand” impressions (the “M” presumably is a nod towards the Roman numeral for “1,000”). Rather than paying per-click (with a presumed end-result of a “conversion,” such as a sale being completed on a retailer’s Website), the advertiser is essentially paying for exposure, with lower expectation for clicks.

The report said that CPMs were “relatively low,” although the article failed to quantify that statement. Regardless, for hospitals, “low CPM” is a valuable hint that there’s an opportunity to get your hospital’s name in front of a lot of people, which is especially attractive for hospitals that don’t have (and perhaps don’t want or can’t afford) PPC campaigns with Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.

Quality, Not Quantity: Conversion Rates?

Let’s return to CTR for a moment…and let’s presume that Facebook ad CTR was high, such as with the earlier example of a 10.0 percent CTR.

Each one of those clicks cost money. Naturally, the more clicks, the more the ad costs (and that’s without introducing the concept of how ad rates fluctuate).

So, for a CPC ad, how do you determine its return on investment (ROI)? The short answer: conversions, or more specifically, cost-per-conversions, also known as CPV.

Lower CTRs generally result in lower CPVs since a high CTR is not a guarantee for success. For example, an ad with a headline that reads “Free iPads!” will presumably get LOTS of clicks. But when visitors reach the destination Website and don’t find free iPads, guess what? They leave—or put another way, they don’t convert. So yeah, you can have a 100 percent CTR and a 0.00 percent CPV, but still get stuck with the bill for all of those clicks!

Although there’s an impulse to suggest that “CPV talks and CTR walks,” CPV cannot be fully related to a PPC campaign because, as illustrated in the “free iPad” example, the quality of the destination Website is a significant factor.

Still, when considering the performance of an online ad service—especially if the focus is going to be put on CPC models rather than CPM models—it’s critical to appreciate how the means relate the ends, which AdWords fully fails to do in this article.

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Well, another year has come and gone. So long 2010, hello 2011!

We’ve put together a compilation of this past year’s featured stories and hot topics from our newsletter, AVID Insight. If you are not an AVID Insight e-newsletter subscriber (which I strongly suggest you be), then here’s what you missed…

January 2010 – Hospital Website Patient Portals: Where to Begin

Offering advantages to both physicians and patients, patient portals are increasingly becoming a popular service for managing health.

• What are some features and functions of patient portals?

• What are the advantages of having a patient portal?

• How do you start a patient portal?

February 2010 – Six Essential Hospital Digital Signage Uses: the 2010 Edition

Digital signage is becoming more of a universal communication platform for healthcare facilities—both large and small, and becoming an integral part of hospital’s overall communication strategies.

• What is the value of digital signage?

• How is digital signage growing?

• How can digital signage be used at hospitals?

March 2010 – Traditional vs. Online Hospital Marketing: Erasing the Lines in the Sand

Times are a-changin’ in hospital marketing dividing “old school” traditional hospital marketers and “new school” online hospital marketers.

• What is causing this erosion?

• What new hospital marketing paradigms are emerging?

• What hospital marketing obstacles remain?

April 2010 – Six Best Practices for Hospital INTRANET Usability

The value of having an intranet is significant, and is continually becoming embraced by hospitals and healthcare systems.

• What are the challenges in identifying an intranet strategy for hospitals?

• How do intranets improve the workforce?

• What are some intranet best practices hospitals should consider?

May 2010 – Emotion vs. Intellect: Quality of Care Content and Hospital Website Marketing

There are two types of writing styles when writing hospital Website quality of care content. These two types—emotional and intellectual—can be challenging to write in order to satisfy these sensibilities.

• What are the challenges for writing quality of care content?

• How do you properly prepare and balance quality of care content?

• How do you deploy quality information on your hospital’s Website?

June 2010 – The Magic Metric: How to Improve Hospital Website Conversion Rates

Conversion rates are the most critical metric when analyzing Website performance and ROI for online healthcare marketing analytics.

• What is a Website conversion and how do they affect hospitals?

• What are some types of hospital Website conversions?

• How do you build a successful conversion strategy for you hospital’s Website?

July 2010 – All Hands on Deck: Five Ways to Educate Your Internal Workforce to Promote Your Hospital Website

Marketing your brand internally is essential in promoting your brand externally, so maintaining a well informed workforce to enhance external perceptions of your hospital’s brand is crucial.

• Why should your hospital’s workforce be informed about your brand?

• Why should your hospital’s workforce harness their influence with hospital patients and visitors?

• What are some concepts to consider as you improve your hospital’s marketing potential?

August 2010 – Is Your Hospital’s Website Ready for Caffeine?

With Google Caffeine being released this past year, the landscape for traditional SEO and indexing is surely going to change significantly.

• How will Caffeine index relevant content?

• How will Caffeine affect healthcare and hospital SEO?

• How will hospital and healthcare Website content managers prepare for the change of your hospital’s Website SEO?

September 2010 – Your Hospital Can Can’t Afford to Not Attend Healthcare Marketing Conferences

It’s no surprise that healthcare marketing budgets are tight, especially this past year. Don’t let economic conditions diminish the value of attending a healthcare marketing that is focused on what you do for the hospital.

• What is the value in attending a healthcare marketing conference?

• How do you get expenses approved to attend a conference by hospital marketing leadership?

• How do you really afford to attend a healthcare marketing conference?

October 2010 – Overcoming the Healthcare Marketer and Hospital Foundation Disconnect

Sometimes there is a bizarre disconnect between hospital marketing departments and their hospital foundations, which one would think would have a remarkably integrated relationship since they both share similar objectives for the hospital.

• Why is there sometimes a bizarre disconnect between the two?

• What are some advantages of integrating both departments?

• Read about how Tanner Health System and MCGHealth integrate their marketing and foundation departments.

November 2010 – Fanning the Flames: Reviewing Predictions for Hot Healthcare Marketing Topics in 2010

Last year we made predictions as to what we thought were going to be the hot healthcare marketing topics for 2010.

• What were some of 2010’s hot healthcare marketing topics?

• Were some of our predictions correct?

• Which healthcare marketing topics from 2010 will still be on fire in 2011?

December 2010 – AVID Design’s Annual Internet Healthcare Marketing Predictions: 2011 Edition

Since the year is coming to a close, we’ve come up with a few topics that are on the top of our list as far as what we believe is in store for online healthcare marketers and experts in 2011.

• What are our predictions for online healthcare marketing technologies in 2011?

• Is social media still hot? Is mobile technology still hot?

• Will increased spending for rich media continue?

Coming in January’s edition of AVID Insight: Hospital intranets and employee communication. Sign up today!

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Just because the year is coming to a close, and everyone’s getting into the holiday spirit (which according to retail stores starts in October…waaay before Christmas) and their brain gets a little fuzzy around this time of year (it’s the eggnog, seriously.), don’t think the gears in the heads of the masterminds over at Google stop turning.

Google has an improved back links feature that launched in late 2010...put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. Jolly Olde Saint Nick.

Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics recently (within the last quarter) launched a new and improved back links feature—a link analysis tool, if you will—that will help you have a greater understanding of where your links are coming from—for your hospital.

The new and improved “Links to your site” feature offers more information about your site’s back links. This includes:

• Who is linking to your site…the most: which helps to identify the Web sites that link to yours, while providing a list of pages from your site that are linked to by that domain.

• Most popular back links page(s): showcasing your most favored linked content.

• Back links’ anchor text: Under “How your data is linked,” this displays whether the anchor text for your back links are related, based off of the content on your Web site.

This improved link analysis tool allows you to identify if you’re getting quality, organic links relating to your content, as well as a host of other back link questions.

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