Web MD Relaunches Site: They still have a lot to learn

Feb/25/2007 09:07 Filed in: Current DTC
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Web MD has relaunched their site with a new look & feel and many features. However one gets the feeling your walking in Times Square and experiencing sensory overload when you go to their home-page. There are so many different calls to action that it's hard to determine where to go or what to do first. This is what happens when you try to be all things to all people rather than look at your audience needs and segment your message to to THEIR needs, not yours.


I'll say this the new Web MD site is more visually appealing than their older site but with so much information to digest on one page its a bit overwhelming. There are imbedded FLASH modules that change, articles that ask you to click and advertisements that divert your attention. Instead of segmenting the audience and looking at how they would want to gather information Web MD seems to want to entice people into a maze of pages that even I have trouble navigating.

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One of the new features is the ability to store your health information online. I find this interesting because in recent research that we conducted we continually heard that patients do not want to store their personal health information online because of privacy issues. It seems every week we hear stories in the media about computers with personal information being hacked or someone losing laptops with databases on millions of people.

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I believe that people go to Web MD to get answers on a variety of issues that they maybe facing. I don't believe that people would regularly go to the site as they would sites they visit everyday like CNN.com or Wall Street Journal.com. click stream analysis clearly shows that when people are faced with health issues they usually go to a number of sites like WebMD or Mayo Clinic.com. When deciding on prescription medications they will go to the products website but then also might go to competitors to determine which medication has fewer side effects. This gathering of information is a normal process for online health users but what I have also found is that online health seekers can quickly become overwhelmed with informational choices. Where should they go and more importantly who should they trust?

When designing health websites it's important to use the KISS principle (keep is simple stupid). Don't try to overwhelm your audience with a myriad of calls to action. Take off your marketers hat and think the way your audience thinks and you will be successful in what you do. The new Web MD site is a step in the right direction but they need to let their users design their site rather than the business people.

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