The web can and will work for hospitals, just as it works for Realtors, insurance sales, stock brokers, lawyers, consultants, and dozens of other service industries. But to work, the hospital website must follow the same rules as successful websites in retail or other service industries. It is not difficult to create a good website - it takes just as much time, effort and money to create a good site as it does to create a bad site. Fortunately, for websites the worst case scenario doesn't involve legal problems in most cases, but it does involve loss of time and money - and yes, even patients. The site must be user-oriented The site must be interesting and usable Before you can achieve these three cardinal rules, however, the hospital creating the site has to have two more critical rules firmly in mind.
Websites can serve many purposes.
They can even serve multiple purposes. But until you know why it is being constructed, you cannot do a good job of it. It's like the old saying about if you don't have a destination in mind, any road will do. If you were to call a builder and tell them to construct a building on your property, you would probably know what you were going to use the building for, and might even have the advance work done to provide them a blue print of the building. It can and should change as you add more ideas, create new purposes, and correct earlier ideas that did not work quite as you planned them.