General Appraiser Report and Case Studies

General Appraiser Report and Case Studies

Online presence is of utmost importance for any business organization to succeed (Leu, Hsu & Song, 2015).This process necessitates combining of web designing and development, writing blogs, optimizing the search engines, marketing based on pay per click, managing good will and reputation, social media like posting on Facebook and twitter and similar other types of avenues in order to ensure a long lasting presence of a person, a business organization, product or any types of services in the search engines and on the internet. However, out of all the online digital marketing tools that are present social media is the most preferred one as it is free to use and promote stuff as the customers tend to recognize the company more if they start noticing it over social media. A page of the business can be created, audiences can be targeted easily, achieving the reports, connecting to each and every customers and solving their issues, giving instant feedback, incorporating the necessary improvements, giving daily updates without even requiring much amount of investments can be done through social media platforms.

Health Navigator charitable trust (HNCT) runs an online website as the Health Navigator with a vision of providing completely reliable health related information that is freely available to all the New Zealanders, so that they can fight with the disease. The Trust holds a noble mission of providing the New Zealanders with reliable online health resources that well support decision making in consultation with healthcare providers, and have an increased confidence on their well-being. Although available on social media platforms, in order to cover such a huge range of information the online presence is of utmost importance for HNCT in order to achieve the motive of free accessibility of the health information. In the following paragraphs the online presence of Health navigator charitable trust is being evaluated and certain recommendations are made for improvement of the website along with certain ways of gaining trust of people on this website.

Discussion

Situational analysis of Health Navigator Charitable Trust:

1. SWOT (S-Strength, W-weakness, O-opportunities and T-threats) Analysis

2. SWOT Analysis is done to understand the online presence effectiveness of HNCT.

Strength: 1.From the Facebook page of social media it can be seen that the Health navigator NZ is being liked by 1.2k people are supporting the website

2. The videos, health related information that are provided are found useful by many people.

3. Patient queries get resolved easily regarding diseases and treatments.

Weakness: 1. not much well known website.

2. Awareness among the people of other countries are less.

Opportunities: 1. Explore diseases specific to countries and provide the information.

2. More healthcare campaigns can be organized.

Threats: 1. Many other similar organizations are there providing the same benefits to the patients and educating them about the diseases.

2. Only New Zealand centered, which may affect the website as the number of patients may decrease in New Zealand.

3. The website provides online information, which may not be relied by the patients due to unanimous identity of the doctors and the clinicians or the pharmacists.

4. The website may be prone to lesser security while it provides connection to third party websites.

In order to increase and convert the online traffic Health Navigator can use direct referral, unpaid referral, paid referral, unpaid search traffic and paid search traffic.

7C’s evaluation criteria:

Commerce:The funding of the majority of the healthcare services provided comes from a governmental department that is Ministry of Health. District Health Boards receive the major section of the funding for the health services from the Ministry of Health. The District Health Board then divides the money to two branches, one is the primary care and the second one being the secondary care(Madhani, 2018). The various services such as contacting the family physician, physiotherapists and midwives that fall under the primary care range of services are not being funded enough to meet the expenses incurred towards providing these services. This may cause charging of a certain amount of fees from the patients.

Recommendation:The fees can be charged based on the income levels of the patient. The patients may be encouraged to have an insurance on their side to provide them medical coverage during their health hazard(DiCapua, 2017). Online insurance providing websites are also available whose links can be given on the Health Navigator website or the website itself can arrange for such insurance policies by contacting and collaborating with other third party providers like Fair Health Consumer website(Welcome to FAIR Health, 2018).(Refer to image 1 in appendix)

Communication:The communication tab is well represented in the website Health Navigator which two distinct divisions –one being requiring only overview experience of the patient and the other one being in the case of emergency (Homburg, Jozi? & Kuehnl, 2017). The in case emergency section is well designed with several questions such as if in need of any urgent attendance ta call a given number, in case of accidents it requires the patient party to input certain data such as current location (Koutsiouris, Vrechopoulos & Doukidis, 2016). In case the patient requires any health related information the website has well uploaded inventory of videos in the library section which gives useful and widely searched tips regarding healthy diet chart, exercises and life changing conditions which are pretty much educative to the patients. The helpline number given also actively answers to get the queries of the patients clarified.

Community:Health Navigator connects well with the people of New Zealand through the customised tab named as get involved. The most positive side of connecting with the community is by the mentioning of their recruitment that is going on (Yang, 2016). The website also has sections for mentioning own expertise in any topics related to health (Price-Haywood, 2015). There is a section of sharing the personal experiences of patients and how they coped up with the health hazard they faced (Dadich & Wyer, 2018). However this section is very monotonous and not much attractive to encourage people read through the stories. However this initiative of sharing personal experiences encourages the patients as well as others to become more involved with the trust.

Recommendation- The own experience tab can be decorated by graphics images that are used in the fair health consumer website for sharing individual patient experience or point of view (Fair Health, 2018) (Refer to image 2 in appendix).

Connection:The website has a lot of supporters like Bay of Plenty, Taranaki District Health Boards, Nelson Marlborough health which are obviously important connections with the Health Navigator website for funding purpose and also referencing. The website however uses only unpaid referral traffic like Facebook or other social media platforms which must be extended to use other types of traffic referrals.

Recommendation- The paid referral traffics may be used like when searched of healthcare websites the name of Health Navigator pops up on the front page of the search engine. Thus the use of banner ads, text ads and banner ads are recommended (Amazon.in Associates Central, 2018) (refer to image 3 in appendix).

Content:The website content is well displayed and loaded with information related to all the health related diseases from a to z in an alphabetic manner along with a dedicated medicine option where the patients, doctors or nurses can gain in depth information (Chiagouris & Williams 2014). Various lifestyles related to various ages and stages of life are also discussed in a broader and easily understandable fashion. The website has an app library which is a huge inventory of video and related articles that can be accessed easily. The website is well connected with the social media pages of Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn which portrays there online presence to the users visiting the website. However the website lacks a complete overview of what the Health Navigator website is about, which gives an overall picture to the user at a glance.

Recommendation:

1. The Health Navigator website can have an informational brief video by covering the entire facts about what the website is and what facilities it provides (Refer to image 4 in appendix)

Context:The website has a good feel as people search the website and when it appears first on the screen they will find moving graphics that are related to chronic health issues like Asthma, chronic Pain with high quality images. The entire page has small sections related to various topics like vegan diet, app library and many others which seems to be attractive to the viewers of all ages, gendersand makes it easy for them to find whatever they are looking for.Proper guidance of the users in finding proper hospitals and doctors, necessity of doing insurances are missing in the website (Buffoli, 2015).

Recommendation-The website content can also contain certain user educational information like fair health consumer website has separate tabs like how to distinguish the best doctors and hospitals and certain short articles on insurance for patients (Fair Health, 2018) (Refer to image 5 in appendix)

Customisation:The feedback option of the website helps the trust to modify the website based on relevant overall experiences faced by the user. The user can also customise the website in their own language by selecting their mother tongue from the languages tabs, also they can search hospital management as per their location in the emergency tab.

The users and the trust of the users on the website

Gaining trust of the users is always an important factor for the business to succeed. Health Navigators must build more trust among the users to gain more number of clicks in the website and requires proper promotional activities for promoting the usefulness of the website, not only in New Zealand but also in other countries like Australia.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory is being utilized here to understand the experiences that the customers faced by visiting the website for help regarding appointments in clinics, information regarding health related issues and display this experiences in the form of a hierarchy (Lemon & Verhoef, 2016).

Stage 1: Functionality:

1. Usability:The website loads faster within 0.69 seconds and displays the contents in the screen of the user, the page structure is well informed and the contents are divided into small sections that makes the layout more convenient and easily accessed, graphics used in the website are of high quality and friendly to users of all ages.

2. Ease of navigation: The website is easy to be navigated as the users can customise their searches in their languages and find the relevant disease or medicine or any other health related information just by clicking on the drop down lists.

3. Reliability:The website however crashes sometimes while downloading and takes considerable time in loading the preview of the document to be printed when the print option is clicked on.

4. Speed: The speed of the website to display the asked contents is relatively less.

5. Security:The website has well-framed security measures designed for maintaining the privacy of the users or the information regarding the patients by giving the users the right to object, right to access information related to them.However the websitedoes not guarantee the surety of privacy practices of the third party websites that their website provides access to (Lu, Fan & Zhou, 2016). The website does not hold itself responsible for this type of fraudulence if privacy is breached due to the website being connected to other third party websites.

Stage 2: Intimacy:

1. Customization – The website has the ability to modify itself as per the needs of each and every user, like they can customize the search in their own language, search for general practitioners and clinics based on their region and the website will provide them with the nearest hospitals and clinics that are located in the searched region.

2. Consumptiontoactivity:The website is soothing to all people of all ages and for all genders, which portrays that the website is user friendly.

3. Communication – The communication is from both sides that is the users put the feedbacks and queries in the feedback section and the customer care personnel replies back within few minutes.

Trust of the people is medium that is visible from the social media site where there exists 5 stars recommendation but review of users exists very less, even the percentage of reacts on the video or informative posts are also very less.

Stage 3: Evangelism:

The brand exists in the heart and mind of the people when its fame spreads through good word of mouth

1. Through the hiring section of the website or through sharing own experiences the website makes itself accessible to maximum population of New Zealand, where people can freely take part and share their health related issues and the way they fought with it which will inspire other people fighting with same issues in gaining mental strength that is Health Navigator is making initiative of bringing people under the same umbrella of Active community member.

2. Company addresses about opinion of everyone as far as they are relevant and on implementing those recommendation will enhance the popularity of the website, the number of clicks will increase.

3. The primary care psychiatrist Dr. David Codyre shared his experience in the website as Health Navigator helped him to refer people to this website for supporting themselves in their health hazard problems, he sometimes is not able to give much time to the patients so he rely on the site’s information because of the best quality of information available here.

Gaining trust of the users:

As Health Navigators, targets people of all ages from child to aged ones only in New Zealand for providing effective healthcare information, there must be an age based section which highlights the types of issues that are faced by the people of New Zealand. For example- videos may have separate sections of problems that are faced by children which are completely separate from those faced by aged people. They do not have much expertise in using smart phones to use net and access websites. The main problem is related to aged people who do not have much expertise in using the net for searching websites using computer or laptop (Ward & Pond, 2015). They prefer physical presence of the clinicians, pharmacists, doctors or nurses to have a face to face conversation, rather than just searching information on the websites related to their health. Although the physical absence of the doctors, physicians and nurses is a major reason for distrusting the website (DeAndrea, Tong & Lim 2018). Moreover, if doctors or clinicians does not give a recommendation of using the online health issue related information for supporting themselves during any health hazard, people do not feel like relying on the website(Lygidakis et al., 2016). Children themselves cannot access the website because of less knowledge and so parents do not want to delay time by reading online articles and not taking the child to the doctor. The insecurity of the website from hackers or others allegedly using the website information is another major reason for distrust of people in relying on the website information. Sometimes people may perceive that their health condition is somewhat different than what is mentioned on the website, which causes a major confusion in the mind of the users regarding what is right or wrong (James, Calderon & Cook, 2017).

Ways of gaining trust of the users:

Technical savvy people are not only using healthcare related websites for reading but also using them for their own support and self-care. The main issue of distrust of users or people on the website information is due to lack of proper protection of the website while it connects to other third party websites (Min & Kim, 2015). People are afraid of the fact that their personal information may get disclosed (Bansal, Zahedi & Gefen, 2016). The main aim of the Health Navigator website should be to incorporate certain mechanism to ensure the security of the website while it paves the path of connection to other third party websites by using HIPAA security rule (Marketing, 2018). As a digital marketing consultant, I can suggest compliance with this security rule which will help in understanding regarding auto backups alerts, data transmission security from the website over internet by encryption, whether the website allows access only to authorized person with proper login id, whether the server used meets the rules and regulations of the HIPAA Security rules (Refer to image 6 in appendix).The social media presence of the website can also be secured by this security rules as the social media platform is a boon as well as a curse, which mainly makes people visiting the page question the reliability of the page maintained by HNCT (Han, 2014).

Implementing an online message or call function for the users or the patients to interact with the persons who shared their similar experiences regarding health issues which may incorporate the trust on the information provided by the website (McLean Osei-Frimpong & Al-Nabhani, 2017). The doctors or the clinicians sharing the article must be given the provision to be contacted when the patients come to the website through mail or message, for any query related to the article shared by the physicians(McLean, 2015).

A better promotional strategy using advertising and public relation through pop-ups, or through mails, increased download of the Health Navigator Applications, and educating people more about the websites relevancy is important factors that can help gain the users trust (Aguirre et al., 2015).

Conclusion

Thus from the above discussion it can be understood that Health Navigators website run by the Health Navigator Charitable Trust is a useful website with an important vision based on health for all of the New Zealanders. It thus encourages people to do their own self-assessment and effectively manage their own health hazards by viewing the relevant information on the website. The website has good sections of health related contents arranged in an alphabetic manner, various healthy living tips like diet charts, medicine related knowledge. The customisation of the website based on user’s language is a positive side which shows the user friendliness of the website. The website however lacks in providing an overall view about what the website is which makes it difficult for the users to understand about the website at a glance. The website also has a major drawback that it is only concentrated on the people of New Zealand and not a well-known website which will increase the number of visitors in the website. The website also has certain security issues while it provides connection to any other third party websites for referencing purpose however it is recommended to use HIPAA security rule which can be designed by using digital marketing tools. The social media presence in Facebook, twitter or other platforms are there in well framed manner but not much people are putting in interests the reason being the website is only concentrated on New Zealand people. The unanimity of the doctors, physicians and the clinicians, the aged people being relying on visiting doctors rather than visiting website, people perceiving their health condition as different from that mentioned in the website are some of the major drawbacks, the dealing methods that are recommended include promotional strategies by pop ups, mails, conversation channel with the doctors or the pharmacists and the clinicians are of utmost importance. The prospect of the website lies in the extension of the website to other countries where there exists more critical patients, suffering from rare diseases. If extended to other countries the website may earn more per clicks revenue and more online traffic of technology savvy people can be driven toward the website.

Recommendations:

The website actually lacks users because of its only presence in New Zealand. With proper funding from the various supporters like Auckland District Health board, Nelson Marlborough Health, Southern District Health Board and many others, The Health Navigator Charitable Trust should enhance the presence of Health Navigators in other countries like Australia. It should collaborate with hospitals, medical colleges and Universities there for charity regarding funding and collecting information on diseases like dementia, lung cancer, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and similar other chronic diseases that people face residing in Australia(Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2018). Dementia is the most important disease to be covered (Prince et al. 2016) .This will help patients in benefitting themselves by consulting the diseases causes and taking self-care. It will also help the website to gain much more click per revenues if it uses paid referral platforms and use the social media sites in a rigorous manner by continuous update of the information regarding health issues daily.

The trust of the users is a major part for the success of the website. The unanimity of the doctors, clinicians must be removed so as to incorporate the thinking that yes the website is reliable in the manner that it gives access to send mails and queries directly to the doctors and the clinicians for answering the queries. The aged people can be given a senior citizen discount on availing any appointment booking through the website. The children parents must be educated regarding the fact that they should study the website themselves and incorporate certain medications after viewing the combination of the medicine prescribed by the doctor. It must be convinced that instead of repeated visit to the doctors the patients or the patient party can themselves study the symptoms of the disease on the website or view videos by a minimal payment and advocate the medicine to the patient. Thus the online presence of the website can be increased and assured in this way.

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