Medical Content Usability Guidelines

Posted: Jul 12 in Usability tagged Usability best practices by Ines

Not many people think that usability guidelines apply to the content of a medical website; however, nothing could be farther from the truth. People visit a website for medical information. They want answers to questions they have about conditions, doctors, medication, and any other healthcare-related needs. The last thing that these visitors want is to find content that’s long and difficult to read. Good content keeps people on your website, it keeps them coming back, but most importantly for a medical website, it helps establish trust in your potential patients.

Content Design Usability
When you write content, you need to make sure that it’s search-engine friendly, but website usability best practices dictate that it needs to be visitor-friendly first and foremost. To ensure that the content on your medical website is written and displayed with the user in mind, try to incorporate some of the following tips:

• Start with your most important content. This isn’t a scenario where you save the best for last. You want to establish trust with your visitor immediately, and you can do that by giving them exactly what they’re looking for right from the start.
• Make your web pages easy to read. Medical websites are different than medical journals. People don’t want to read pages and pages of text. They want to scan the web page and be able to find what they’re looking for. Use bulleted lists and break content up into sections with bold-faced headers.
• Make your pages easy to read. You may think that white text on a light blue background looks nice and peaceful, but to the person trying to read your article on a procedure they’re having, it’s frustrating. Make sure that your text is contrasted against the background so your visitors can actually make out the words you write.