Last week’s HSJ reported on a leaked research report for a Department of Health review of NHS websites. For those of you with an HSJ subscription, you can read about it here. For those of you without, it said, in summary, that the NHS spends around £85m a year on thousands of websites that are often hard to find, badly designed and not wanted by the public. It claimed that the failings in the NHS digital estate could be undermining the reputation of the NHS brand.
I don’t think the findings are particularly surprising. The report had found 4,121 nhs,uk websites – nearly twice as many sites as there are NHS organisations. While there are very good NHS websites out there, my sense is that too few are developed with a clear purpose, target audience or consideration of how, from a visitor’s perspective, they will fit alongside the multitude of other NHS sites.
Websites for projects and initiatives are often set up as a substitute for – rather than a result of – a considered communications strategy. Many have niche subject matter and narrow audiences that could be engaged more effectively (and cost effectively) through other channels.
With no clear purpose for many sites, it is not surprising that the report’s authors found performance data difficult to obtain. But the potential return on investment from websites is huge. I blogged in March about some research on council websites published by SOCITM (the Society of IT managers) that suggested the cost of dealing with a resident’s query face-to-face was £8.23 compared to £3.21 by phone, but just 39p online.
Perhaps most worrying was the report’s finding that GPs – the group responsible for engaging people in commissioning in the new world – have the worst online presence.
We need to move beyond websites as vanity publishing for pet projects and repositories for board papers and compliance statements. We must develop and value our online assets as purposeful tools for helping us to do business and protecting our reputation.
This means making sure all websites are overseen, if not owned, by communications teams and that they are aligned with corporate communications objectives and strategies.
Tangled web of NHS online
I don’t think the findings are particularly surprising. The report had found 4,121 nhs,uk websites – nearly twice as many sites as there are NHS organisations. While there are very good NHS websites out there, my sense is that too few are developed with a clear purpose, target audience or consideration of how, from a visitor’s perspective, they will fit alongside the multitude of other NHS sites.
Websites for projects and initiatives are often set up as a substitute for – rather than a result of – a considered communications strategy. Many have niche subject matter and narrow audiences that could be engaged more effectively (and cost effectively) through other channels.
With no clear purpose for many sites, it is not surprising that the report’s authors found performance data difficult to obtain. But the potential return on investment from websites is huge. I blogged in March about some research on council websites published by SOCITM (the Society of IT managers) that suggested the cost of dealing with a resident’s query face-to-face was £8.23 compared to £3.21 by phone, but just 39p online.
Perhaps most worrying was the report’s finding that GPs – the group responsible for engaging people in commissioning in the new world – have the worst online presence.
We need to move beyond websites as vanity publishing for pet projects and repositories for board papers and compliance statements. We must develop and value our online assets as purposeful tools for helping us to do business and protecting our reputation.
This means making sure all websites are overseen, if not owned, by communications teams and that they are aligned with corporate communications objectives and strategies.