Medical background
HCA Healthcare is one of the UK’s leading healthcare groups, operating eight private hospitals in Britain - including famous centres of excellence like the Lister and London Bridge - as well as outpatient and diagnostic centres, and private GP services.
Equator was appointed lead digital agency for HCA in April 2019.
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Healing an ailing infrastructure
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the private healthcare industry experienced a wholesale diversion of resources to support the national effort to handle the crisis. HCA took the hiatus in normal service as an opportunity to invest and drive change, including in the digital estate.
We found their digital infrastructure in pretty bad health. The website failed on a regular basis, and consultants, stakeholders and patients hated it. We had our work cut out if we were to deliver a digital experience that reflected the clinical excellence of the organisation.
A new platform for greater stability
With a site that went down at least once every 24 hours, our first priority was a full web re-platform, and an upgrade to the Sitecore instance. This gave us the foundations to create a comprehensive roadmap of deliverables and objectives.
Finding the pain-points
We held interviews with c-suite stakeholders, clinical staff and patients. These highlighted pain points and helped us define where we wanted to get to. We then did user testing with consumer audiences so we could better understand how the brand and website were perceived. Then we collated our findings into business and digital challenges.
Up and running better than ever
Immediate fixes around technical and UX issues included CRO optimisation, stabilisation of the website, a re-design of key brand and marketing essentials, and new functional enhancements for digital marketing.
Long-term programmes
For the longer term, we mapped out a list of deliverables including new user journeys, redefined global site architecture, research with internal and external audiences, work on navigation and site search, optimisation for mobile use, and omnichannel personalisation.
A healthier experience all round
While work is continuing and there’s still a way to go on our roadmap, we’ve already seen some impressive results:
100% uptime and stability for the site
50 successful deployments, including critical fixes and new functionality
More than 5000 broken links and errors fixed
Increased year-on-year digital revenue, despite COVID challenges
A solution for now and for tomorrow
Our work with HCA has provided both emergency first-aid for a failing site, and long-term primary care for future digital health. If your own business needs a consultation, call us for an appointment.