{
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    "title" : "Analytics Success Series: Health Resources & Services Administration |Digital.gov",
    "description": "Analytics Success Series: Health Resources & Services Administration",
    "home_page_url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/cm-topics-button-component/","feed_url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/cm-topics-button-component/2016/09/20/analytics-success-series-health-resources-services-administration/index.json","item" : [
    {"title" :"Analytics Success Series: Health Resources \u0026 Services Administration","summary" : "Health Resources and Services Administration’s Analytics Success: Using Analytics to Reduce Content and Improve User Experience  Unlike out-of-town guests, you want your web visitors to stick around. So, if your site continues to see a bounce rate that stubbornly refuses to drop—it’s time to make some changes. That’s exactly what happened to the Health Resources","date" : "2016-09-20T02:00:17-04:00","date_modified" : "2024-04-02T09:45:13-04:00","authors" : {"christy-choi" : "Christy Choi","mackenzie-cummings" : "Mackenzie Cummings","richard-morey" : "Richard Morey"},"topics" : {
        
            "analytics" : "Analytics",
            "content-strategy" : "Content Strategy",
            "open-data" : "Open Data",
            "user-experience" : "User Experience"
            },"branch" : "cm-topics-button-component",
      "filename" :"2016-09-20-analytics-success-series-health-resources-services-administration.md",
      
      "filepath" :"news/2016/09/2016-09-20-analytics-success-series-health-resources-services-administration.md",
      "filepathURL" :"https://github.com/GSA/digitalgov.gov/blob/cm-topics-button-component/content/news/2016/09/2016-09-20-analytics-success-series-health-resources-services-administration.md",
      "editpathURL" :"https://github.com/GSA/digitalgov.gov/edit/cm-topics-button-component/content/news/2016/09/2016-09-20-analytics-success-series-health-resources-services-administration.md","slug" : "analytics-success-series-health-resources-services-administration","url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/cm-topics-button-component/2016/09/20/analytics-success-series-health-resources-services-administration/","content" :"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eHealth Resources and Services Administration’s Analytics Success: Using Analytics to Reduce Content and Improve User Experience\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUnlike out-of-town guests, you want your web visitors to stick around. So, if your site continues to see a bounce rate that stubbornly refuses to drop—it’s time to make some changes.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s exactly what happened to the Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) \u003ca href=\"http://mchb.hrsa.gov/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eMaternal and Child Health Bureau’s (MCHB) website\u003c/a\u003e. Last year, in 2015, the site’s average bounce rate was 63% — and more than 70% for some key landing pages. And given the non-mobile-responsiveness of the site, it was unsurprising that the average mobile bounce rate climbed even further, reaching nearly 77%.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThose facts alone sounded alarm bells. But then we dug deeper.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"image\"\u003e\n  \u003cimg\n    src=\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/digitalgov/_legacy-img/2016/09/600-x-335-Analytics-Success-HRSA.jpg\"\n    alt=\"Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) Maternal and Child Health Bureau’s (MCHB) homepage.\"/\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\n\n\u003ch2 id=\"uncovering-the-problems\"\u003eUncovering the Problem(s)\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst, we plunged head-first into an analysis of available analytics via the \u003ca href=\"/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/cm-topics-button-component/guides/dap/\"\u003eDigital Analytics Program\u003c/a\u003e—beyond the bounce rate. We needed to expose all the issues if we planned to fix them.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe looked at three main things:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTop Content report (to weed out low-value content)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSearch Terms report (to identify high-value content and content gaps)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNavigation Summary (to understand how users were navigating through the site)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe results told us two things:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWe needed to re-evaluate the organization of our content.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThere were hundreds of low-value content pages. And an overwhelming number were inaccessible to users—instead, buried deep in the recesses of our content management system.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"a-course-of-action\"\u003eA Course of Action\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, much of the content needed to go. And the rest of it—though clearly popular and valuable—still came with its own weaknesses. Dense, complicated text sprinkled with acronyms and legal jargon.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe divided the content into three piles: remove, revise and develop. The latter being the brand-new content we’d need to fill the gaps. It would be quite the undertaking—568 pages, to be exact.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen all was said and done, we reduced the content by a whopping 91%*. We also moved forward with a complete site revamp by:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003estreamlining the user experience with tile-based navigation\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eassuring users the ability to use our site no matter their device by switching to responsive templates, and\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eimproving readability through the implementation of plain language principles and web best practices.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUsing information architecture validation software, we surveyed over 90 active stakeholders and determined that our assumptions about the site’s IA were overwhelmingly correct.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"ready-set-revamp\"\u003eReady. Set. Revamp.\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLaunching in July 2016, our site has already begun to show improvements—including a gradual lowering of our site’s bounce rate. Given data from previous site revamps, we expect key metrics will continue to show progress over time.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ccite\u003e*Caveat: The MCHB site links out to several sub-sites controlled by different contractors. The 91% only takes into account pages removed from our content management system.\u003c/cite\u003e\u003cem\u003eChristy Choi, Mackenzie Cummings, and Richard Morey work in the \u003ca href=\"http://www.hrsa.gov/about/organization/bureaus/oc/index.html\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eHealth Resources and Services Administration Office of Communications\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/em\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eThis post is part of an ongoing series of case-studies highlighting how the federal government is using the Digital Analytics Program (DAP) to improve websites for the end-user. If you have an analytics success story to share, or want to get your federal government site participating in DAP, please contact us via \u003ca href=\"mailto:dap@support.digitalgov.gov\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eemail\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n"}
  ]
}