We do things differently.

"The software should change to fit your needs, instead of your organization changing to fit the software".

Geonetric focuses on user-centered design as a business philosophy. We have found that too many healthcare organizations incorrectly or inadequately focus on the end-user experience and find themselves redesigning their Web presences within a few years.

It is critical to have a solid development foundation for your initiatives, but if your interface is not focused on building and enhancing user satisfaction, those efforts and costs are for naught. Satisfied consumers are profitable consumers, and Geonetric identifies those key areas to enhance and measure through our detailed strategy and usability processes.

The Optimal User Experience

There are good Websites, and then there are world class Websites. Developing and fostering a great Website does not happen by chance. It requires systematic methods to create the Optimal User Experience - a unique environment that generates a process for converting site visitors to health consumers with your organization.

Your Web, Intranet and Extranet presences need the essential ability to draw the user into a personalized site experience with clear, concise calls-to-action based on the individual user's foreseen needs.

Creating the Optimal User Experience is essential to a world class Web presence. Addressing how consumers relate to and interact with your organization, focusing largely on creating and modifying the environment in which they interact builds brand loyalty, differentiates you from competitors and creates direct, measurable opportunities for ROI.

Identifying how components (online and offline) fit together is an essential piece to the process, but many organizations tend to put the 'cart before the horse' in this regard. Defining and outlining how that content will be delivered, managed and displayed is essential to long-term adoption for both users and administrators, and simply focusing on the technical connectivity itself leaves the user experience and underlying purpose in the back seat.

Essentials to creating the experience

1. Differentiate Needs
   Health consumers, patients, physicians, employees and prospective employees all have unique goals and needs when they reach your Website, Intranet, Extranet or Portal. You must clearly define which audience your project is addressing and what their particular needs are. This can be done in a variety of ways, from creating user personas to real-time site surveys, but the purpose is to have a clear, concise set of needs for that audience which you plan to address and fulfill with your initiative.
2. Establish Outcomes
   One of the cornerstones for creating the optimal user experience is defining what services, functions and actions you want them to take on your site. This can range from simple access to a health library to more complex, interactive features including online appointment scheduling and pre-registration. The purpose is to have a defined outcome or goal for the user that is measurable in a clearly defined way. This will serve as the basis for ‘numbers gathering’ for your project’s ROI efforts.
3. Guide Behaviors
   This is chronically the least address aspect of the Optimal User Experience. The majority of organizations focus solely on providing specific online tools (outcomes) for their unique audience’s needs (differentiate), but do not address how those users will be guided in a systematic way to those tools, how they will interface with them and how the site will influence those outcomes (whether or not the tool is used).
   
   This requires a focus on usability, how you are presenting information on your site and guiding visitors that come from many different channels to a specific course of action. The purpose is to guide a user's behavior once they reach your site - predicting their needs based on how they use your site, what their real-time interests are and presenting relevant, logical courses of action (outcomes) automatically.

Three is key

It is essential to address all three components of the Optimal User Experience to generate the maximum ROI for your Web investments. Applying only one or two aspects limits your capabilities to meet the needs of your audiences and deliver an unsurpassed level of online service.