At the center of your hospital’s class and event registration strategy lies your website – your patient's best resource for information on upcoming events and how to participate. When someone visits your website, they expect to be able to find the information they need as quickly as possible. Anything less and you run the risk of losing potential participants, and future patients, to competing hospitals.
How can you make sure your website visitors find up-to-date information on hospital sponsored community events, health classes, and seminars?
Provide Clear Navigation – In a previous article focused on increasing referrals to in-network physicians, one of my first recommendations was to focus on making it as easy, and intuitive as possible for your website visitors to navigate to your “Find a Doctor” section. The same goes for your health classes and events. If your visitors can’t find your available seminars, they can’t register – and don’t assume they will dig through your site to find them, because chances are they won’t.
Ideally, your visitors should be able to access your classes and events section within two clicks (one click is better) wherever they are on your website. The best way to do this is to place a link on your website's main navigation menu.
Make It Easy for Users to Search for Classes and Events – Many hospitals offer dozens, if not hundreds of classes to choose from. We recommend implementing a simple way for users to search through your list to find the classes and events that apply to them. At minimum, you should allow users to search by location, topic, and date. Depending on your community’s demographics, you may also want to offer users the ability to search for classes offered in languages other than English.
Promote Classes & Events on Your Homepage – The homepage of your hospital’s website usually receives the most traffic, thus it is one of the best places to promote your hospital-sponsored classes and events. By dedicating a small piece of webpage real estate to promoting three or four of your newest classes, you greatly increase the likelihood visitors will review and register for the event. This list should be updated as often as possible to encourage users to revisit your site.
Allow Your Patients to Subscribe via Email or RSS – People are inundated with an overwhelming amount of information every day through the Internet, TV, radio, and their smart phones. And while they may be interested in participating in your events, they may not remember to check back to your website regularly to see what’s available. Help your community stay up-to-date on what you have to offer by allowing them to receive automated updates through email or RSS (Really Simple Syndication).
For example: Now that you have a regularly updated list of new classes and events on your homepage, offer a link to your RSS feed or a field where they can submit their email address for future updates.
Provide an Easy Way for Visitors to Register – It’s critical that you provide a clear call-to-action that directs visitors on how to enroll in your classes or events. This should either be a toll-free 1-800 number into your hospital contact center or a web form that allows users to provide their information, submit payment (if applicable), and confirm their registration.
Note: If you choose to offer your visitors a choice between calling your call center or registering through your website, it’s a good idea to have your contact center manage the entire class and event registation process. This ensures rosters are consolidated, eliminating the chance for double-bookings and inaccurate reporting.
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By following these simple guidelines, you can significantly increase registration rates for your hospital-sponsored programs. The key to success is to continually test new ways to engage your patients through your website and to build off of the strategies that are the most effective.
What other website changes have you made to improve registration rates?