How NHS Trusts are using microsites to stand out from the crowd
54 seconds.
That’s the average time a user spends browsing a web page. With such a short amount of time to hold someone’s attention and deliver your message, sometimes it can be good to be a little different.
As the leading provider of digital solutions for the NHS and social housing sector in the UK, we help organisations stand out from the crowd and effectively showcase their services. On average, people form an opinion of your website in the first 0.05 seconds of landing on your page – that’s not very long in the big scheme of things, so websites need to be engaging, easy to navigate and showcase your offering front and centre.
From maternity or mental health through to sexual health or orthopaedics, we’ve worked with countless NHS trusts to help them showcase their services in a visually engaging and easy to digest website; better known as a microsite.
A microsite is a branded content site or small group of webpages, that can sit as a subdomain to your current website or as a standalone site. When it comes to branding, content, features and functionality, the possibilities are endless. As are the benefits of using them.
Four big benefits of showcasing your services
There are many benefits of using a separate microsite to promote speciality services offered by your Trust. To demonstrate just a few, we’ve pulled out four key benefits of using a microsite, along with real-life examples from some of the sexual health services microsites we’ve created for our NHS customers.
1. You can get creative when it comes to branding
With 48% of internet users stating their number one way of determining an organisations credibility is through its web design, it’s important to be visually engaging. By using a microsite that is separate to your main website, you can tailor your branding to target your specific demographic using colours, layout and imagery that stands out compared to your usual brand identity.
Example: Barts All East veered away from the usual NHS brand style with their new microsite. By using bold colours, bright people based imagery and a sleek layout they’re tailoring their visual identity to appeal to a modern audience. This not only encourages engagement but helps them seem approachable by giving themselves a sense of personality.
2. Educate your audience and showcase expertise
A whopping 61% of internet users say that if they don’t find what they’re looking for within five seconds, they’ll go to another site. By creating a microsite to showcase one specific service your NHS Trust offers, you’re able to go further than the normal “here’s where to find us” and provide an extra offering to your users through educational content that emphasises your expertise. Plus, as seeking medical help is a personal journey, educational content can help those less able to book an appointment self-diagnose and self-educate, which ultimately builds trust in your service.
Example: With a clean and easy to digest navigation, Croydon Sexual Health’s website has a sitemap filled with useful links to further information and educational content for a variety of audiences. This clear user journey means content is easy to find and would cater to users of all technological abilities.
3. Elevate the user experience by implementing unique features
Forbes found that 88% of online users won’t return to a site after a bad experience, which means that an elevated user experience can have a big effect on the reputation of your Trust. Microsites offer you the freedom to format your website with the user experience front of mind. You can implement unique features like contrast changes to improve accessibility, interactive buttons to take you to new pages, sticky navigations to help you move through the site easily and so much more.
Example: Requiring medical services is a personal and often private experience. With a separate microsite, you can enable your users to quickly navigate to a non-descript website at the click of a button – just like London North West NHS Trust have done on their Sexual Health and Contraceptive Services website (check the yellow button in the top right hand corner!).
4. Dictate your look and feel for different device types
With an intuitive platform controlling a microsite that’s separate to your main website, you can easily dictate the look and feel of your content for different device types. In December 2023 the UK recorded 71.32% of all internet traffic as coming from a mobile device. These figures means it’s more important than ever to carefully curate the look and feel of your microsite across different device types to deliver a consistent user experiences that doesn’t hinder your brand reputation.
Example: Northamptonshire Integrated Sexual Health and HIV service elevated their user experience by tailoring the delivery of their content on mobile compared to desktop. By moving around the content to prioritise navigation links to other key pages, they’ve made it easier for users to find important information and created a clear journey path to move users through the website.
With a whole host of benefits that put your users and your content at the heart of your offering, a microsite is so much more than just another website. It offers an engaging and exciting new avenue for you to connect with your audience and showcase your services whilst upholding your brand reputation.
If you’d like to discover how your Trust could benefit from one of our digital solutions, click this link and we’ll be in touch! Or if you’d like to learn more about how to enhance your online presence sign up to one of our webinars around understanding your audience, improving accessibility, or creating an enhanced user experience.