HPRMN is introducing a new department that will provide an interactive soundboard for your healthcare marketing questions and comments submitted to our Web site at
http://PrandMarketing.com. The site provides a forum where you get to ask industry questions and make comments about pressing issues that are top of mind. Here's how it
works: email Ann McMikel, senior editor at [email protected] and let your fingers do the talking.
Earlier this month, Tom Quinn, marketing coordinator for Cortland Memorial Hospital asked:
My hospital recently [launched] our first Web site. To help gauge response to the site, we have a "Contact Us" page where visitors can offer feedback, request information, etc.
and we also plan to add a counter to calculate the number of hits.
I wondered if there is any kind of benchmarking information for new Web sites... is there any kind of standard or rule-of-thumb for new sites?
Hi Tom:
To help answer your question, we called John Eudes, principal at Greystone.net, an Internet consulting firm in Atlanta. He isn't aware of any benchmarking studies that provide
information on ideal standards for hospital Web site traffic because there are so many variables, like geographic location and a market's Internet penetration, that make it nearly
impossible to crunch these kind of numbers.
But all isn't lost; Eudes suggests looking at traffic indicators like log files to determine how useful your site is to surfers. Log files can tell you how many distinct
visitors your site generated, what pages they visited and how long they were there.
There are several Internet software firms that can generate this kind of traffic analysis. Webtrends (http://web-trends.com) is the firm that came immediately to mind for
Eudes. He also recommends looking at what your top "exit" pages are to determine whether visitors are coming to your site and checking out several key sections before leaving, or
simply dropping in and out.
John Eudes can be reached at 770/220-0229, ext. 102.